Why is it that...

HAL9000

...just about every electric guitar I have ever seen has individual saddles that allow strings to be adjusted for both height and length. However, when it comes to acoustics there is either very little or no means of easy adjustment. Surely on an acoustic you can't hide behind effects and/or distortion and would therefore expect intonation to be more important? My guess (and it is only a guess and therefore probably wrong) is that the sound of an acoustic is more harmonically rich and complex so that trying to achieve perfect intonation is pretty pointless. Anyone know?

viz

I think it's because no one wants metal on their acoustics.

[Deleted User]

Tone transfer primarily. In the mid/late 60s Gibson produced acoustics which had adjustable bridges but generally it is thought that a well cut single saddle maximises the strings' vibrations and give the best sound. Most modern acoustics have some degree of intonation correction built into the saddle.

Even electrics (like PRS's stop-tail) which lack individual height/length adjustment, give very accurate intonation. Given that most acoustic players tend not to venture up the dusty end too often, the factory positioning of the bridge and compensation in the saddle usually produces a perfectly acceptable level of accuracy.

OilCityPickups

I had a fantastic bridge on an old Hofner archtop years ago: it was rosewood with several slots cut in it crossways and short lengths of fret wire pushed into the slots under each string. Obviously not really a practical a solution for normal acoustics ... but I've always thought it was an elegant idea ... so I found a pic

viz

That is really cool. Why isn't it a practical solution? Because they'd get lost I suppose?

ICBM

As richardhomer said, Gibson tried this in the 1960s...

http://www.lutherie.net/tune-o-matic.gibson.dove.jpg

Yamaha did in the 70s as well.

The common consensus among acoustic players was that they sounded shite - you see a lot of old Gibson Doves with them filled in with new wood and a conventional saddle fitted.

In fact, if you get the intonation dead on, or very close - which is quite easy to do, although you may have to cut the top edge of the saddle into a non-straight line as many makers now do, or use a split-saddle arrangement like Takamine and Lowden did - there's really no need anyway, you can often get it spot on to the point it never needs to be changed, so an adjustable bridge is pointless.

Even if not, as you suggest it's less noticeable on an acoustic if it's slightly out because the harmonic richness tends to cover it, and you're not using distortion - which makes bad intonation more noticeable because it mashes the not-quite-identical frequencies together and amplifies the 'beat' (difference) frequency.