Goya/Levin Adjustable Saddle Improvements

1968 Goya N-26

These are stock saddles that can be found on some Swedish made acoustic guitars. They are made from plastic, have a raised hump in the center for the string to lie on, and are threaded to M8x0.75 through the bridge and bridge plate. Intonation is suspect with these as well as ease of adjustability with my instrument already having markings in the lacquer where tools were used to try and twist the saddles.

My first improvement to these are to flatten the tops of the saddles, find the truest point for correct intonation with a strobe tuner, and refile the plastic to reflect that. Because these saddles rotate 360 degrees for a very accurate height adjustment, I left enough material on the "humps" to allow for them to be filed down so the intonation is not lost on small adjustments.

My newly adjusted saddles, it is not easy to see but all of those have been specially filed to intonate correctly.

My second improvement was to drill a small hole into the bottom end of the saddles, thread in a small allen-head machine screw, and superglue it in place. This allows for the saddles to be adjusted from within the soundhole via an Allen wrench and some patience which is a large improvement over how they worked previously. You would have to grab the saddles with some pliers and carefully move them since wood expands and shrinks and the threads could be a little stiff.

I considered making new saddles out of bone but the prospect of trying to run bone through a die without chipping seemed difficult.