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The flatpicked guitar reviews database is here to help educate people before they purchase an instrument. Of course, this is not meant to be a substitute for playing the instrument yourself!
161 reviews in the archive.
Where Purchased: www.guitarsaddles.com
As Bob Colossi stated in his web site, the elephant ivory saddle is good for instruments where you want to tone down the brightness. I have a Washburn jumbo 12 string guitar with maple back and sides. It was indeed too bright, and this saddle improved the tone somewhat, and has good sustain. I previously was using a Tusq saddle; Tusq gives a bright sound.
A luthier is not required for the installation. The buyer specifies what instrument he has, and Bob makes the saddle just a bit oversize. The buyer then sands it to give desired height and thickness. This was not a problem for me, and was indeed an advantage.
My lower-cost Washburn Chinese-made instrument now sounds like what I would expect a Gibson 12-string maple instrument to sound like.
Note: This is a specialty-application saddle. For most acoustic guitars, (where one wants to keep a fair amount of brightness) my choice is Bob Colosi's West African Ivory. The latter is harder than bone, and thus bright.
Overall Rating: 8
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