Wondering how much an acoustic guitar saddle replacement costs? For DIY installation, quality guitar saddles cost around $15 to $30 each. For installation by a professional guitar technician, the cost will typically be around $75 to $150 for parts and labor depending on saddle material and your location. Let’s review the pros and cons of DIY acoustic guitar saddle replacement versus professional installation.
The key benefit of DIY installation is the low cost. With shipping, quality compensated saddles of manmade materials, such as Tusq, NuBone, or Micarta will typically cost around $15 to $20 each. Please see the below links for examples.
Please note that you can find much less expensive plastic and bone guitars saddles online. However, the materials are likely processed with harsh chemcials, which leads to mediocre tone and a greater possibility of developing string gouges earlier
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The other key benefit of DIY installation is that you learn more about how your guitar works and how to make subtle adjustments to dial in tone and playability for your preferences.
The main drawback of DIY installation is time. If you are satisfied with your current saddle’s height, and are simply swapping a pre-made saddle, then total time for sanding and fitting should only take about 30 to 60 minutes. However, if you have lost your saddle or wish to make height adjustments, plan on additional time to dial in the height.
The other drawback is that if you make a mistake with your new saddle, such as sanding it too low, then you will need to get another saddle, whereas if you hire a guitar technician to do the work, then the guitar technician would be responsible for any mistakes.
Learn About Guitar Bridge And Tailpiece Installation And Repair
Each guitar is slightly different, even from the factory, with different neck angle, neck relief, nut slot height, and saddle height. Although each guitar might leave a factory with the same twelfth fret action specs, this can be achieved via a balance of the factors just mentioned. As such, you are unlikely to simply pop in a new saddle without making adjustments.
The notable benefit of having a professional installation is that the technician has experience with many other guitars and can dial in your saddle height/length/thickness. For example, your original saddle and your new saddle may havevarying E to E height differencesand a guitar tech knows how to make these adjustments. Another common problem of DIY installation is getting thesaddle too low, ortoo tight or too loose. A good guitar tech also knows how to balance saddle height, neck relief, nut slot height for optimal playability and tone.
The main drawback is the cost. As mentioned previously, good guitar technicians will typically charge around $75 to $150 to replace a saddle, although this often includes other basic setup work, such as a truss rod adjustment.
Taylor Acoustic Guitar Top Repair
Another drawback is that you might end up with a guitar tech who does a poor job. A common problem with guitar techs is that they will simply lower your saddle so that the action is as low as possible without buzzing, which can negatively affect the tone. A good test for a guitar technician is to ask them to get yourguitar’s action as low as possible without buzzing. Good technicians will explain that this is not necessarily desirable as it can kill tone, and will instead discuss appropriate steps to improve playability.What we’ve got is a tailpiece installed on this Takamine. It’s anchoring the strings which pass through the (pinless) bridge and up over the saddles.
Thing is, it’s not the best solution. The tailpiece is resting against the top of the guitar with isn’t the best for getting a good tone. Also, the guitar’s designed to have strings couple to the bridge for good transfer to the top.
You can see the problem this was trying to solve. The original bridge had cracked and was starting to disintegrate where the strings anchored.
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Along the way, someone had installed a third bolt right in the middle to try keep it together. You can see the filler sunken in between the D and G strings at the rear or the bridge. These bridges already have a couple of bolts installed to help keep them from ripping free and flying across the room. Once this crack happened, though, no amount of bolts was going to help.
Since we’re going to avoid the saddle slots with their related awkwardness, I’m going to remove the back half of the bridge. Essentially, I’m just taking off the damaged part.
Removing it is relatively straightforward. I chose to rout off the rear section in a straight line, bringing it close to the top but not quite touching. I finished up with chisels.
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I didn’t rout all the way to the bottom of the bridge because a guitar top has a radius —it’s domed. My router was resting on a makeshift jig (to get that straight line) and wouldn’t have matched this dome.
Also, I couldn’t apply heat to make the glue let go as I wanted to maintain good adhesion on the front section. Routers and chisels is the way to go.
The basic shape of the new bridge is easy enough to rough out of a rosewood blank. Then some ‘finessing’ to get it to shape. It’s important to get the ‘footprint’ correct but I’ve left it higher than the existing bridge.
Acoustic Bridge Repairs
Drilling the mounting holes and the string holes needs a bit of care as you don’t want these to be misaligned of out of place.
As there was already a third hole in the guitar top (one more than would usually have been there) I chose to go with a third bolt on this repair. I wouldn’t have added it unless there was already a hole but I figured it’d give some more security since it was already there.
Once everything has been shaped and cut, we still need to pay attention to the bottom of the repair piece. Remember that ‘dome’ on the guitar top? the bottom of this piece should match that so it mates well. Glueing a flat piece of wood on a domed surface can be problematic. Some fiddly sanding of the bottom will give me a good match.
Acoustic Guitar Belly Repair
You can see from the photo below that I’ve installed two of the three bolts. These aren’t actually tightened down as part of the glueing —they’re just there to help align things and keep the piece from slipping around.
Incidentally, that large wooden cam clamp bears some explanation. You would, ordinarily, never clamp onto the middle of a soundboard like this as you could damage it. I have a couple of jacks installed inside the guitar to prevent the clamp ‘crushing’ the top or back. Even so, I was pretty careful with the pressure applied —I just wanted to ensure the rear of the piece was properly mated.
Once the glue is dry, I can take the top down to the correct height with a sharp chisel. It’s much easier to do this in place than to try get a match off the guitar. Some sanding and clean up and I can install a couple of inlay pieces to cover the bolts.
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It probably won’t be as much of a conversation starter as a honking great tailpiece but I reckon the guitar looks and sounds a lot better now. This Tak lives to fight another day.
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