saddles with slightly wrong spacing

[gwEm]

i got a set of gotoh saddles recently, and i'm quite happy with the quality. the spacing is 10.8mm - its slightly too wide for the spacing on my squier, and slightly too narrow for US spacing.

i was wondering if the fan-out or fan-in of the saddles would affect tone? 10.8mm is closer to the spacing on the squier. my gut instinct says it won't be a problem, though there may be other implications.

[Philly Q]

I don't know if it'll affect the tone, but it messes up the string alignment a bit - the high E will "fan out" more than the low E because it's on a longer intonation screw.  I had that problem on my very first proper guitar, my old Hamer Special.

You could maybe drill the holes at the back of the bridge slightly bigger, to give a bit more play for the saddles?

[gwEm]

do you reckon its better to have fan-in or fan-out?

i didn't consider the fact it will affect higher strings more.. is fan-in even a problem?

[Philly Q]

do you reckon its better to have fan-in or fan-out?

I would say "fan-in" is less of an issue.  In fact, it may not actually even happen, because it's not the strings causing "fan-out", it's the saddles pushing against each other because they haven't got enough room.

If the saddles are a bit too narrow (on the US spaced bridge) I think they'll just sit without touching.  Whether or not this is a good thing, I don't know - on Strats they nearly always do touch, but if you look on the Callaham and Glendale sites about their Tele bridges, Callaham think the saddles should never touch but Glendale think they should! :? :lol:

Fan-in, fan-out, in, out, shake it all about....

[Lukie]

Had this problem with a wilkinson bridge and a set of string saver saddles. They have little gaps but line up alright with the exception of the high e string for some reason (probably my dodgy bridge mounting skills). If you have a narrow neck fanning out may be a problem with strings in danger of falling off the edges.