I had recently bought a "the loar" LM-600 and I'd searched the archives here finding lots of posts suggesting the bridges are awful and to buy a CA bridge.
I've got a lot of experience making/fitting violin bridges and doing fretjobs making nuts etc. So I carefully fit the bridge feet on the stock bridge and wondered what the big difference could be that would make a CA bridge sound so much better as reported in all the posts (I was guessing it was more the act of having the bridge fit correctly during the upgrade).
Meanwhile, I picked up second instrument and it had a CA bridge installed. The first thing I noticed was that the shape of the saddle was very different - the offset for the E strings was very far forward, which brings the whole bridge back square on the body - my stock saddle didn't have that and the E side of the bridge needed to be slanted forward a lot to get the intonation on. The other thing I noticed was how the CA has the holes sized correctly so the saddle cannot rock on the posts - the stock saddle was a sloppy fit over the posts.
So ... for fun, I sanded down the top of my stock saddle and glued on a scrap piece of bone and shaped it with the offsets more like the CA saddle. It sounds and plays much better, and the bridge feet are now lined up better with the body.
I'm thinking any sane person would just buy a CA bridge rather than spend all this time but I'm retired and this was fun. The holes in the stock saddle were still a sloppy fit over the posts so as a ghetto workaround I wrapped the posts with teflon tape and now it has a snug fit and the saddle cannot rock back and forth.
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