Set Excerpt to Characters, Not Words

I need every post excerpt to be the same length and include “…read more” at the end. I have tried every function I could find to make it generate the first x number of characters instead of words but none have been successful. Here is the code I currently have in functions.php

// Excerpt Length Control
function set_excerpt_length(){
  return 44;
}
add_filter('excerpt_length', 'set_excerpt_length');

  
   function new_excerpt_more( $more ) {
    return ' <a class="read-more" href="'. get_permalink( get_the_ID() ) . '">' . __('...Read More', 'your-text-domain') . '</a>';
}
add_filter( 'excerpt_more', 'new_excerpt_more' );

The current code works exactly how I need it to, but can I set it to pull characters instead of words?

• This topic was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by myeclecticself.
• This topic was modified 7 years, 9 months ago by Andrew Nevins.