Question about reverse saddles on tun-o-matic bridges

[Kazwell]

I notice on most if not all Gibson guitars and really any model that utilizes the tun-o-matic bridge, that the saddles for the lower three strings are usually reversed. I asked someone at a music store and they said this is done because it is difficult to get the intonation right on the lower strings and reversing those 3 saddles helps.

 

Now here's where the plot thickens.  A month or so ago, I purchased a Gotoh tunomatic bridge from a local music store for a LP type guitar I own because one of the saddles was buzzing. When I got home, I was surprised to see that the way this particular bridge was designed, the screws holding in the saddles were pinned permanently into the metal structure and couldn't be removed to reverse them even if I wanted to. 

 

The other week when my H-150 arrived, I noticed that the lower strings did not have reversed saddles. Didn't check to see that the screws could be removed to change anything. The intonnation to me seemed fine and I figured the folks at Heritage left the bridge alone for a reason.

 

Can anybody help me make sense of all this? I know there is a modern tun-o bridge and classic tun-o bridge type. Does this play a role. And if it is so important to reverse these for "proper intonnation" why doesn't Heritage do it?

 

Thanks in advance to any and all who can help clear up my confusion on this issue.

[GuitArtMan]

Easy.  The original Gibson tune-o-matic bridge - also knows as the ABR-1 - is narrower than modernd bridges and so the saddles have less travel room.  The saddles on the wound strings were reveresed to help compensate for this.  Modern bridges such as the Nashville bridge, Gotoh, Schaller, etc.  are sliightly wider and therefor the saddles have more travel room.  Because of this, you don't need to reverse the saddle on the wound strings.

[Kazwell]

Thanks for the info GuitArtMan!

[tulk1]

That's good to know. I'd noticed the same thing on the bridges. But never tried to figure it out.