I am very happy with my segmented saddle with posts in bone and spruce in between. About 10 years ago Pyrolytic coal was a hype as material in saddles. It was also one of the inspirations that resulted in my own segmented saddle, PyC was used as small inset pieces in a secret material, but also in wood.

PyC, which is basically pure carbon like graphite or diamond in another form, comes in two varieties. A softer and cheaper variant, and a much harder and glassy variant which is more expensive than gold. Both are used as anodes in lithium batteries, the glassy variant is also used as a coating and wear surfaces on metal prostheses, eg heart valves. It was the latter that was used in small pieces in the expensive saddles that went by the name " Black diamond“. It was not a success and Patentexpired in 2022. One video was interesting, so I started researching the matter, maybe PyC could replace the bone post? The unique "selling point" of PyC is that it is "transparent" and lets all frequencies from the string through. Both variants of PyC have the same acoustic properties.

Cheap PyC could be ordered from China in slabs of any size, I ordered some slabs that were 5mm thick, the same thickness as the posts in the segmented saddle. PyC is relatively hard, has a sound and always feels cold as it conducts heat as well as vibrations. In order to be able to cut the posts, a nice little Proxxon was also bought circular saw with diamond blade. circular saw with diamond blade.

Several different segmented saddles were made for my own GammelGura to test different configurations, solid post, PyC on top of a bone post, and PyC as a shim under the entire saddle with bone posts. A big problem with the cheap variant is that it is as black as graphite when it is sanded, it was not possible to keep the spruce clean in a segmented saddle.

The material made a difference, the sound became very detailed and clean, but also artificially clinical with less bass (alternatively more treble). In comparison, the bone posts gave a "fuzzier" tone. But the less PyC I had in the segmented saddle, the better I thought the guitar sounded.

So, my conclusion is that PyC was interesting, but no improvement. On the plus side, I got better at making segmented saddles and now I have a cool little circular saw. It's also nice not to dirty the saddle with black carbon!

I ordereId a very small piece of vitreous PyC, 15 x 15 x 2 mm out of pure curiosity for a lot of money. It came in a large and nice box where you had to search before you found the little chip. It was black and hard as glass 🙂

A Swedish research report is available if you want to know a little more about PyC.