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RE: black diamond saddles
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Andy Culpepper
Posts: 3023
Joined: Mar. 30 2009
From: NY, USA
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 RE: black diamond saddles (in reply to riffmeister)
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quote:
Hello, I'm new here but some may know me as I have posted for many years as 'riffmeister' on other forums.
I tried the Black Diamond saddle with proprietary base from Jim Guthrie on one of my guitars. I sent Jim the bone saddle and he fashioned a similar size/shape BD saddle. I measured the two saddles with my micrometer and I had to sand down the BD saddle by a very small amount to get the height and thickness within 0.03 mm of the bone saddle. I don't have access to an accurate balance, but the BD feels lighter in weight. Jim said he weighed the two saddles and the BD saddle is about half the weight of the bone saddle. I put the bone saddle back on the guitar and let everything equilibrate for about 24 h. Then I played the guitar for about 45 min to get my ears accustomed to the sound and I made a recording. I then loosened the strings and replaced the bone saddle with the BD saddle. When the guitar was back up to pitch, my ears noticed a difference. To me, it was an unambiguous difference. I made another recording.
Bone: http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12719620
BD: http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=12719619
For the time being, I will be using the BD saddle on this guitar. My subjective interpretation is that it gives the guitar a somewhat 'larger' or 'more full' sound with a bit more emphasis in the upper partials, and I believe the guitar is somewhat more responsive in the right hand. I am also tempted to try a BD saddle with a different base material.
Welcome to the Foro.
I do hear a pretty distinct difference in the sound of those two recordings.
And for the record, I personally don't consider it improbable that using a different saddle material could change the tone of a guitar. In fact, almost everything you change about a guitar will have some impact on the sound, but not always perceptibly.
From those 2 recordings, I much prefer the sound of the bone saddle.
If my ears are working properly, the BD saddle offers quite a bit more sustain. IMO too much (I don't know, is that possible for classical players?). It actually sounds unnatural to my ears.
To my ears the BD saddle also lends a more nasal quality to the sound.
After hearing this I'm convinced that I don't want to try these saddles on my guitars.
Thanks for taking the time to do that. Nice playing and nice selection for this test.
_____________________________
Andy Culpepper, luthier
http://www.andyculpepper.com
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Date Mar. 29 2014 14:45:39
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: black diamond saddles (in reply to riffmeister)
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Hi, Riff. Nice to see you here.
The following is not addressed personally to Riff, who from prior knowledge has my respect, but to the general population of this thread:
In my experience, successful luthiers are highly intelligent, highly motivated and extremely self-reliant. No matter what their training, successful guitar building seems to be largely the result of a self-directed learning process.
Such luthiers work constantly to achieve their objectives in sound and playability. Nobody makes a fortune as a self employed luthier, but even most of those who are relatively successful financially are constantly striving to improve.
It seems reasonable to suspect that for most successful luthiers, their instruments are to a large extent optimized for the materials they have experience with. Suggesting that a change in saddle material, described by its makers as radical, is bound to improve the sound of a guitar seems a bit far fetched. Change it? More likely--but still subject to verification by experiment.
Could a radical change in saddle material, coupled with a few guitars' worth of experimentation, get a luthier further along in his quest? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
Would arrogant and insulting putdowns help in introducing a new product? Not a chance.
Would arrogant and insulting putdowns by non-luthiers who have never experienced the new product contribute to advancement of the art? Not a chance.
RNJ
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Date Mar. 29 2014 20:12:17
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: black diamond saddles (in reply to guitarbuddha)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: guitarbuddha
Musical criticism may or may not be an art.
I wrote this phrase
'I dislike the way segovia makes no attempt to play legato in the chaconne where it would be difficult. He tries to sell this by making the whole opening choppy. Definately the cart leading the horse.'
Richard Introduced himself to me thus.
'The 37,543rd regurgitation of anti-Segovia bile. This is about as silly as Alberto Lopez Poveda's hagiography masquerading as biography.'
I myself am not engaged in a serialised autohagiography. But tastes differ.
D.
I hesitated to reply, lest I throw fuel on the fire, but I post everywhere under my own name, so I thought I should correct a mistaken impression that might affect an errant Googler.
The above is from the thread "Segovia and Flamenco" on the Off Topic forum, the first post on January 17, 2013.
Rather than introducing myself to guitarbuddha, to whose post I took no exception, my reply was clearly labeled as a response to the originator of the thread, who had called Segovia "a jerk."
My post came just after guitarbuddha's, which led to confusion. He appeared to reply to my post in polite tones.
As the thread went on there was illuminating comment about Segovia's playing, audible in recordings, and his technique, visible in videos. There was also a good deal more Segovia bashing, and other ill-natured stuff.
I chimed in again, praising the comments on objective observations, and deploring the attacks on Segovia. I didn't defend him, I just said that bashing someone who had provoked such widely varying impressions among people who knew him well was useless negativity from someone who had never met the man.
The thread went on to shocking length, lasting until the end of March. Thankfully it deviated from talk of Segovia about half way through, and went on with a lot of stuff about 12-tone music, John Cage, modern painting, and a lot of witty comment.
Of course, guitarbuddha will have quite a different take, to which I suppose he is entitled.
He is not entitled to twist my words.
RNJ
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Date Mar. 30 2014 18:25:13
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jmdlister
Posts: 2
Joined: Dec. 7 2010
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RE: black diamond saddles (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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It's been quite a while since I posted on this forum (I'm still quite a novice when it comes to building flamenco guitars), but I've been looking at this thread because I'm interested in the Black Diamond saddle material...
quote:
ORIGINAL: Richard Jernigan
In my experience, successful luthiers are highly intelligent, highly motivated and extremely self-reliant. No matter what their training, successful guitar building seems to be largely the result of a self-directed learning process.
Such luthiers work constantly to achieve their objectives in sound and playability. Nobody makes a fortune as a self employed luthier, but even most of those who are relatively successful financially are constantly striving to improve.
It seems reasonable to suspect that for most successful luthiers, their instruments are to a large extent optimized for the materials they have experience with. Suggesting that a change in saddle material, described by its makers as radical, is bound to improve the sound of a guitar seems a bit far fetched. Change it? More likely--but still subject to verification by experiment.
Could a radical change in saddle material, coupled with a few guitars' worth of experimentation, get a luthier further along in his quest? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
RNJ
I can't fault any of that, Richard. I've yet to meet a luthier who thought all his/her guitars were "perfect", so most of us are interested in any new ideas or materials that might help us further along the path.
Of course, there are a great many "new" ideas and materials proposed by luthiers, strings manufacturers, tonewood suppliers, etc. which turn out not to be new at all. In this case, however, we do have a saddle material that appears to be new to the nylon string community, and I'm therefore willing to give it a try.
If I try the Black Diamond saddle, and can hear a difference, then I've got another variable to play with. Even if the change is not an obvious improvement, it might be possible to change other aspects of construction to achieve the sound I want, but keeping the (claimed) increase in volume and/or sustain (increased sustain of course being of more interest to classical players than flamenco). There's also the possibility of changing the insert size for each string, which I'm hoping might allow some scope for improving 3rd string response.
I'll try to measure any differences I do hear, as I like to have some sort of backup to convince myself it isn't all in my head.
In the end, I might decide these saddles are not for me, but there's really only one way to find out, isn't there?
James
_____________________________
James Lister Guitars, Sheffield, UK
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Date Mar. 31 2014 9:33:43
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