Posted: 3/13/2023 5:05:02 PM EDT
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Last month I acquired my first Larrivée, a 1998 C-05. Beautiful abalone rosette, JCL 18:1 chrome tuners with ebonoid tuning buttons, and a classy florentine cutaway. The guitar sounded amazing and played extremely well. After pulling the original Fishman undersaddle pickup out, I had a shorter saddle and needed to shim it a little to get proper action. Since the guitar was built with an ebony bridge, I decided to source a fully compensated graphite saddle for it to "blend" a bit and a set of abalone dot bridge pins since I like the look of those better than bone or similar. I had some ebony pins in my parts box, but only 4 of them had the abalone dots, so I bought a full set for this guitar. Today everything arrived and I went to work. The new saddle was longer, taller, and fatter so I had some filing and sanding to do to get it to fit the saddle slot. Attached File Attached File Once that was done, I had to file the bottom to establish the correct height. This was done on another vise with some jaws I use for guitar saddle work. Attached File Attached File Attached File I restrung it with Elixir 11-52 phosphor bronze strings. I chose to do this to see how my cleat repair on the top would react to higher string tension. The action is still slightly higher than I like but that will get adjusted at the next restringing. |
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Quoted: What is the reasoning for a graphite saddle? How does it change the tone? What does this guitar weigh? For several years I have been buying guitars with ebony bridges. I prefer the look of a graphite saddle to blend in with it, along with ebony bridge pins. Tonally it smooths out a little, and I get a surface that lubricates the string where it contacts. If I ended up only bringing 1 guitar to a show, and needed to move from standard to DADGAD or something, there's less of a chance of string breakage. The guitar comes in at about 4.5lbs with the strap and Rare Earth pickup. |
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Quoted: Nice work. 11s are extra lights on an acoustic, though, so not sure about your "higher string tension" comment? Were there 10s on it? 10s are standard electric gauge. Thank you. I'm pretty sure the guitar came with 12-53s. I know they were D'Addarios when I removed them to pull the Fishman UST. It needed to be repaired because of a crack that was in the top. After the repair, I started with 10-47s because I had that handy and wanted to ensure the repair was properly glued. Moving to 11-52s was simply a test of how the repair responded to higher tension. |
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Very nice Never done it because of the patience and time required The bridge area is where 99% of where your sound comes from so you gotta get that right, for sure I only put extra lights on all my acoustics. Benefits are less tension and stress along with absolutely no discernible tone loss compared to larger diameter strings. Much easier to play, as well. PB D’Addario for me IMO |
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Quoted: Very nice Never done it because of the patience and time required The bridge area is where 99% of where your sound comes from so you gotta get that right, for sure I only put extra lights on all my acoustics. Benefits are less tension and stress along with absolutely no discernible tone loss compared to larger diameter strings. Much easier to play, as well. PB D’Addario for me IMO Thank you. This guitar liked the 10-47s I had on it and I'm going to experiment with various D'Addario and Elixirs to see what it likes best for tone and playability. I've been using Elixirs for years but time will tell what I end up with. |
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Quoted: Was that a Graph Tech TUSQ blank, OP? Nice work. I'm putting on a TUSQ XL nut for my thru-neck solid body build. Good call! Yes it was. ETA: Graph Tech String Saver PS-9280-C0 I like their goods. I put a graphite nut on the neck-thru "Les Paul" I built 23 years ago. Attached File |
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Quoted: How is intonation? I saw a great video from twoodfrd on youtube about how to get all the strings right. He leaves the saddle flat on top and uses cut string pieces to find the top of the cut for each string. Brilliant. I haven't had a chance to try it yet. Perfect as far as I can tell. 2 of my Taylors have the compensated B string only saddles, and my other is using a fully compensated version exactly like this one. In fact, I think this guitar intonates better than my 310CE does. I've got a song where I use a partial capo on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th strings to simulate an open Esus tuning. They stay intonated better on this guitar when I play that setup. |
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Quoted: Thank you. I'm pretty sure the guitar came with 12-53s. I know they were D'Addarios when I removed them to pull the Fishman UST. It needed to be repaired because of a crack that was in the top. After the repair, I started with 10-47s because I had that handy and wanted to ensure the repair was properly glued. Moving to 11-52s was simply a test of how the repair responded to higher tension. Gotcha. I'm lucky enough to have two world class luthiers here in the Milwaukee area so I outsource all this! |
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