I have bought an Ohana baritone ukulele in the last couple of weeks. It has a straight saddle slot, but very thin saddle, maybe 2mm and I think the slot or bridge is about 1.5mm further back than it ideally should have been. It is maybe 3/4 of an inch shorter than my other baritone, noticeably less tight-feeling, and with the supplied strings has low relief, almost none.
The original saddle was a straight-topped one, i.e. there is no compensation. The older uke has the B back further, and a thicker saddle giving more intonation leeway of course.
I've made two bone saddles for the new one myself, but see that when comparing the 12th fret harmonic and fretted notes, all points on the saddle need to be further forward.
I don't want to return it for reasons I needn't go into, and want to make this ukulele work as best it can, even if in the end this might involve string experiments with different tension classical strings, and a higher than usual action. (If you haven't noticed or needed to see it, the action height to an extent does vary the difference between the harmonic and fretted notes, though in this case the action would have to be impractically high to make this intonation issue disappear.)
Does anyone here have a good way of dealing with this? My next thing to try, which will involve a bit of application, is to make a saddle that is a bit thicker at the top than the portion of the saddle that is inside the slot, so that I have a bit more room to have the bearing point further forward. Obviously there is only so much I can do here. (One of Paul McCartney's Epiphone acoustic guitars, having been right-handed, has quite a bit of extra bone glued on to correct the intonation, so I'm kind of finding a slightly more graceful-looking way of copying that.)
I'm left handed myself but as I say the saddle slot is not slanted and the intonation was similarly off when the uke was right-handed.
I realise that the ukulele isn't the ideal instrument to hope for good intonation on, and that it's part of it's charm on the whole to be that way. However I'd like it to be optimised, and this is the worst intonation I've heard on any instrument I've owned for a long time. I would guess the shorter neck is relevant but I'll still give a few things a try.
In better circumstances at a later date I would get the saddle slot filled and re-cut if that will be guaranteed to correct this, but I can't right now. I'd consider widening the slot myself - i.e. from the 'front' to extend how far forward the bearing point can be - but would be wary of making this uneven. I'm pretty good with many maintenance tasks but once it comes to woodwork I'm not comfortable. But maybe this is needless anxiety and commonly done?
Thanks for any suggestions.
The original saddle was a straight-topped one, i.e. there is no compensation. The older uke has the B back further, and a thicker saddle giving more intonation leeway of course.
I've made two bone saddles for the new one myself, but see that when comparing the 12th fret harmonic and fretted notes, all points on the saddle need to be further forward.
I don't want to return it for reasons I needn't go into, and want to make this ukulele work as best it can, even if in the end this might involve string experiments with different tension classical strings, and a higher than usual action. (If you haven't noticed or needed to see it, the action height to an extent does vary the difference between the harmonic and fretted notes, though in this case the action would have to be impractically high to make this intonation issue disappear.)
Does anyone here have a good way of dealing with this? My next thing to try, which will involve a bit of application, is to make a saddle that is a bit thicker at the top than the portion of the saddle that is inside the slot, so that I have a bit more room to have the bearing point further forward. Obviously there is only so much I can do here. (One of Paul McCartney's Epiphone acoustic guitars, having been right-handed, has quite a bit of extra bone glued on to correct the intonation, so I'm kind of finding a slightly more graceful-looking way of copying that.)
I'm left handed myself but as I say the saddle slot is not slanted and the intonation was similarly off when the uke was right-handed.
I realise that the ukulele isn't the ideal instrument to hope for good intonation on, and that it's part of it's charm on the whole to be that way. However I'd like it to be optimised, and this is the worst intonation I've heard on any instrument I've owned for a long time. I would guess the shorter neck is relevant but I'll still give a few things a try.
In better circumstances at a later date I would get the saddle slot filled and re-cut if that will be guaranteed to correct this, but I can't right now. I'd consider widening the slot myself - i.e. from the 'front' to extend how far forward the bearing point can be - but would be wary of making this uneven. I'm pretty good with many maintenance tasks but once it comes to woodwork I'm not comfortable. But maybe this is needless anxiety and commonly done?
Thanks for any suggestions.