Advice requested on dodgy bridge saddle, please

smigeon · June 2019

Hi all,

I sanded down the underside of the bridge saddle on my old Grand Suzuki acoustic. I'm very pleased overall: it's improved the guitar's playability out of all recognition - and I swear the sound is better too.

One problem: the top E string now moves slightly on the bridge saddle (the other strings are fine). This produces a quick "chirrup" as the string shifts (and a momentary feeling that it may snap :-)). It's not *too* bad: it only happens when I hit it hard and only then when I switch plucking direction from downs to an up, or ups to a down. And it doesn't make the string go wildly out of tune or anything. But it is of course very irritating.

The cause is obvious: sanding the saddle has resulted in insufficient down pressure from the string, so there's no longer a single stable point at which the string can rest on the saddle. In fact it seems that there there are now *two* alternative stable points.

So what to do? I don't want to start again with a new bridge saddle. My thought is to pick a one of the two stable points and slightly deepen the slot at that point. Would this work? Assuming so, what is the best way to do such deepening??

Thanks for any advice...