In this video I test three types of saddles made for Stratocasters - the vintage-style stamped steel (made by Callaham Guitars), the stock American Standard block saddles, and Graph Tech String Saver graphite saddles. I was curious about tonal differences, as well as sustain.
I used my 1991 American Standard Strat, which I have refretted with stainless steel frets, and installed DiMarzio Virtual 54 pickups. I strung the guitar with three sets of .026 D strings and .017 G strings. I then adjusted the action and intonation to be exact for each pair. I also set the pickup height as evenly as possible.

I tested and recorded the guitar acoustically, then plugged into my Marshall JVM205 on the (sort of) clean channel, with no reverb and flat EQ. I used a Sennheiser E609 microphone into a Zoom H4 recorder. The acoustic part was done with my phone's video recorder.

Acoustic Tests

Stamped Steel:
0:52 - open strings
1:06 - fretted thirds
1:25 - single notes

Fender block saddles:
2:10 - open strings
2:24 - fretted thirds
2:46 - single notes

Graph Tech String Savers:
3:25 - open strings
3:39 - fretted thirds
4:01 - single notes

Amplified Tests

Stamped Steel:
5:04 - open strings
5:34 - fretted thirds
5:59 - single notes

Fender block saddles:
6:36 - open strings
7:08 - fretted thirds
7:32 - single notes

Graph Tech String Savers
8:09 - open strings
8:36 - fretted thirds
9:03 - single notes

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