Bad intonation with compensated nut?

thebigcheese

thebigcheese

"Hi, I'm in Delaware."
Help me out here. I bought a Music Man Luke 3 not too long ago and it's my first guitar with a compensated nut. For whatever reason, tonight is the first time I noticed this problem, but for some reason, I can not get the 1st and 2nd strings to sound right together, but they are perfectly in tune when open and at the 12th fret (I am a guitar tech, so I do at least know how to set up a guitar). I have never had this problem with any of my other guitars, which include a Deluxe Strat, a McCarty, an old Gibson, and a custom guitar I put together. None of those have compensated nuts. The only other thing I can think of is that I recently put those new balanced tension D'Addario strings on the Luke, so maybe some of the slightly different gauges are causing weird issues? I can't see why that would matter, though, as I put beefy slinkies on the Gibson so I can tune it low. Am I crazy? Does anyone else have experience with this?

Edit: Also they read perfectly in tune when I'm playing a D chord, which is where I notice it... maybe I am crazy? Somehow it still sounds weird...
 
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I remember once, while i using a yamaha acc i bought new strings & the only ones the shop (yes it was a few years ago!)had was martin & i thought well,"can't go wrong with martin" but i could not do a thing with them,tuning was ALL over the place,went back to the shop a few days later,complained & bought a new set(still had to pay!) put new strings on & presto,,yamaha was back sounding good,,
the ONLY explanation must be; something weird about the combination of martin strings on MY yamaha.
I use martin strings on my martin guitar & absolutely love-em,& the guitar of course.
SO it could well be the different strings when you changed the compensated >!!NUT!! < I just noticed this, don't you mean bridge?:confused:
edit; if you have got a compensated nut,, there's your problem right there?:)
 
Compensated nuts do not work. They can not work. They will never work for the simple reason that if you compensate (temper) one interval you will throw out others. Read the sticky.
 
If they're "perfectly in tune", but they don't "sound right together" then you're just goofy! ;)

But seriously, there's a couple things I can think of:

1) Intonation is a always a compromise. Even with a compensated nut or bridge or whatever, the straight across frets mean that you'll never actually get every note on the neck perfect, and even if you could...

2) Intonation had about as much to do with your hands as the guitar itself. Where you place your fretting fingers, how hard you hold them down, even how hard you hit the strings can affect it, so it's really only ever by accident that a fretted note is actually in tune.

3) The pitch envelope of a guitar string usually swings high at the attack before settling down to its real note. Our ear kind of expects this, but there's that and then...

4) The Equal Tempered scale that the guitar neck approximates is a compromise in itself. The major third is one of the intervals which is furthest from the actual "pure third" which mathematics would dictate, and never actually sounds quite right. If you're playing an open D chord, you've got a major third between string 2 and string 1.

Of course, you probably know all of this, and it sounds like this guitar is doing something noticeably strange, rather that the kind of "known weirdness" to which you've become accustomed on other guitars, so it probably doesn't help...
 
Most manufacturers shorten the first fret distance by a few thousandths to pre-intonate the nut, so there's a good chance your other guitars have compensated nuts also, just not in an obvious way. Remember that any intonation adjustment is action/string-tension/tuning specific, so if you've got a moving target in any of the departments, the assumptions used to set the guitar up are out the window. I would change the strings first off and see if that sorts it out.
 
ashcat_lt said:
2) Intonation had about as much to do with your hands as the guitar itself. Where you place your fretting fingers, how hard you hold them down, even how hard you hit the strings can affect it, so it's really only ever by accident that a fretted note is actually in tune.
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This is why a capo up the neck on an acoustic sounds so good. You get used to people holding the high chords with their fingers, and they cannot fret 4-5 strings correctly, therefore it sounds OK but never sounds quite right.

Then you listen to open chords played with a capo in the higher frets (5-9), and it sounds like a different instrument.

I have a friend with a mini-martin, and he only plays open chords with a capo. Initially, I thought that his style was a little pedestrian, and likened his technique to laziness to learn other chord patterns. When he changes key for a new song, he just changes the capo up and down and re-tunes the strings slightly.

After listening to his sound, it was fantastic, for just the reasons highlighted in ashcat's post. It's not as versatile, but the tone was..........AMAAAZIIIING (Rona Thorne Archer FX) - YouTube

As for this less than 'amazing' sounding Musicman guitar, may I suggest that the nut is worth a look. If the nut gets used for one gauge of strings, and you change it up, then the strings can vibrate differently to one another, even when they are in tune.

They end up producing that strange tone you are talking about. So the first string sits OK, and sounds great, but the second string is just not sounding right because it is not sitting properly in the nut.

I have had that happen on bass before. Sometimes it sounds like a slight buzz. On guitar, it can sounds like a mysterious dud string that has no sustain.

If you 'wear' new strings into that nut, it then goes away. Good luck.
 
Meclazine said:
As for this less than 'amazing' sounding Musicman guitar, may I suggest that the nut is worth a look. If the nut gets used for one gauge of strings, and you change it up, then the strings can vibrate differently to one another, even when they are in tune.

They end up producing that strange tone you are talking about. So the first string sits OK, and sounds great, but the second string is just not sounding right because it is not sitting properly in the nut.

I have had that happen on bass before. Sometimes it sounds like a slight buzz. On guitar, it can sounds like a mysterious dud string that has no sustain.

If you 'wear' new strings into that nut, it then goes away. Good luck.
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It isn't that kind of weirdness. I fix that sort of problem for customers all day. Usually just need to widen the slot and/or make sure it has a nice, smooth channel. This is an out of tune sound, the warble you can hear as you move to strings closer to one another in pitch. As the notes are all registering as "in tune," I can only assume it must be the psychological weirdness mentioned above. Maybe the problem is that some notes that are in tune will never actually sound in tune when played together and that a traditional not works better because the notes aren't perfect. Hmmmm...
 
muttley600 said:
Compensated nuts do not work. They can not work. They will never work for the simple reason that if you compensate (temper) one interval you will throw out others. Read the sticky.
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Read it. Well, the first three pages, anyway. I think I get the point. I know these guitars come stock with 9s, so if the compensation is set for those, maybe 10s won't cooperate? I've never noticed any particular problems going from one gauge to another before, assuming I check the setup after changing. Would it make sense to put a standard nut on it, since that is what my ears are expecting? As a tech, this is not a problem for me to do and I'm always happy to learn about these quirks to better educate my customers.
 
i went through a phase where i wanted to put compensated nuts on all my guitars. that was back when i stripped the pots out of my guitars in search of a more van halen 1 kind of sound. i wound up with earvana nuts on my dearmond sg style guitars and i have never had a problem with them. i normally tune at the fifth fret and regular nuts are usually out of tune at the open string.
 
muttley600 said:
Compensated nuts do not work. They can not work. They will never work for the simple reason that if you compensate (temper) one interval you will throw out others. Read the sticky.
Click to expand...

Hey Mutt,

First, what's going on, man? Long time no talk. :D To ask a question not because I don't agree with you (I 'm sure you're right) but because I legitimately am curious as to the reason, why is that? Is it that a compensated nut can presumably improve the intonation a bit on an open string, but as soon as you fret anything the effect is gone ands you're back with all the usual even temperament problems?
 
DrewPeterson7 said:
Hey Mutt,

First, what's going on, man? Long time no talk. :D To ask a question not because I don't agree with you (I 'm sure you're right) but because I legitimately am curious as to the reason, why is that? Is it that a compensated nut can presumably improve the intonation a bit on an open string, but as soon as you fret anything the effect is gone ands you're back with all the usual even temperament problems?
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Pretty much. All our modern day temperaments are a compromise. None of the intervals with the exception of the octave are perfect. If you temper one interval which is essentially what a compensated nut does, you throw off all the others. 12 ET (Equal temperament) was decided on by composers as a kind of defacto back at the start of the last century. It had been understood and used for centuries before that along with other temperaments. You can get a closer to perfect guitar by using 19 or even 31 frets per octave but they are harder to play and not really practical. Yes I have done 31 frets per octave as a practical exercise.

The guitar is fretted in 12 ET get used to it.. The reason some makers put the nut very slightly closer to the first fret is because they are trying to overcome the extra tension that a badly cut high nut introduces. A decent luthier will cut the nut in exactly the right place and sink the strings to the correct height which is about the same height as the first fret. Anything higher and you are adding massively to intonation problems. I cut every nut slot to fret height.
 
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