intonation on a les paul goddess

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Nicole_Rose

Nicole_Rose

Great White North Girl
i've been tweaking the set up on my goddess to suit me better and i can't figure out how to set the intonation on it. it has a wraparound bridge and the saddles are part of the bridge itself and i don't see any way to raise or lower them.

anyone know something i don't?
 
tom18222 said:
the big screws on either side of the bridge.

that's how i lowered the action. you mean i don't have any individual string control and that i have to use those to somehow balance the intonation? shit.
 
its not like a fender brigde. you cant raise and lower each string.
 
Just make sure for each string the harmonic on the 12th fret is in tune with the played note on the 12th fret and your good to go.
 
Nicole_Rose said:
i've been tweaking the set up on my goddess to suit me better and i can't figure out how to set the intonation on it. it has a wraparound bridge and the saddles are part of the bridge itself and i don't see any way to raise or lower them.

anyone know something i don't?

to set intonation you don't have to raise or lower the saddles but move them back or forth.

unfortunatly with that type of bridge you can't do that, intonation is factory set.
 
faderbug said:
unfortunatly with that type of bridge you can't do that, intonation is factory set.


For real?? What if ya wanna change string gauge?
 
TelePaul said:
For real?? What if ya wanna change string gauge?
That's why I replaced the single-piece wraparound bridge on my '72 LP Special. No intonation adjustment was possible on that bridge, so I retrofitted a Schaller adjustable bridge with microtuners. It's not attractive but it works great.
 
Another alternative would be the Leo Quan 'Badass Bridge', it should be a direct fit to you're present bridge and has all the features of the tune-o-matic style bridge. See the link for more info, Nicole..


Leo Quan badass bridge
 
TelePaul said:
For real?? What if ya wanna change string gauge?

It's best to stick with the gauge strings the guitar came with. Yes, the bridge is simple, but some would argue that it is precisely this that makes it so good.

I heard an engineer from Gibson justify the wraparound bridge by saying, "You won't need to adjust it anyway; we put it in the right place to begin with." Clearly he hadn't figured climate and quality control into his equation :rolleyes: .

Personally, I like the design - 99.9 percent of people can't tell if a note is out of tune within 10 hertz, and most violinists only come within 5... although there is probably something wrong when a 200 dollar Danelectro has only three screws and can be intonated perfectly, but a 1,200 dollar Gibson requires a compromise.
 
32-20-Blues said:
It's best to stick with the gauge strings the guitar came with.
Why? :confused:
32-20-Blues said:
Yes, the bridge is simple, but some would argue that it is precisely this that makes it so good.
I think the word you're looking for is "cheap." :p :D
 
32-20-Blues said:
Personally, I like the design - 99.9 percent of people can't tell if a note is out of tune within 10 hertz, and most violinists only come within 5...


??? I think most folks would hear the diff between A-440 and a 450 Hz tone: that's nearly a quarter tone. Perhaps you meant to use the term "cents" instead of "Hz".
 
It's nearly always possible to get the intonation "right" on a wrap around bridge assuming that it has been set in the right place with the right compensation or offset. It will also always be "wrong" Its the nature of the beast. It requires an acceptance of a basic premise. Our modern western tuning temprement is 12 note ET which is a compromise in itself. No guitar will ever have perfect intonation right the way across the neck, in fact you don't want it to. What your after is the best all round compromise so that the ear will tell you that everything is OK. As has been suggested the most common way to achieve this is to set the fundamental harmonic at the 12 fret which is the octave to match the fretted note at the same place. This will normally give you the best all round intonation for 12 note ET. You then need to set the relief and action to get the right intonation for the string gauge.

If you can imagine that the string is stretched as you fret it the tuning is raised relative to the fret position or sounding string length. The amount the pitch is raised will become greater as you go up the neck because you have to push the string further and there is less string to be stretched.. Clearly then the note at say the 5th fret is going to be raised in pitch less than say the 17th fret an octave higher. Again a compromise that the fret spacings accommodate to get you in the right ball park. All ET tunings are a series of compromises. In the days before 12 note ET was adopted lute and viol players would use this to their advantage as they moved the gut frets to get perfect fifths and thirds by setting the frets in a very similar way to the modern guitar. They also adjusted for the varying quality of gut strings by slanting the frets. Other instruments like the spinet or harpsichord were tuned in other temperaments to give perfect fifths and as a result other intervals would sound terrible (at least to our ears). Even the same intervals in different keys would be out. Composition at the time took all this into account.

So, if you have the intonation at the 12 fret right with the harmonic and the fretted note, raising the action will sharpen notes above the 12fret more than below it and lowering the action will bring them closer together. String gauge will also play a part in this. Also important is clean new strings old strings lose their ability to intonate because the material stretches and loses its uniform stiffness and mass per unit length. So when setting intonation always use good branded and new strings. If you cannot get good intonation by adjusting the action and the neck relief then The bridge is in the wrong place or the action is way to high.

If was impossible to set the correct intonation on a wrap around bridge then it would be impossible to get an acoustic guitar with a single saddle to play in tune. Clearly that isn't the case.

I've found over the years that a lot of players that come to me to have the intonation looked at are often expecting too much from the modern 12 note ET system itself. They are listening for perfect fifths, thirds and octaves and in 12ET it just aint possible although we can get very very close.
 
faderbug said:
exactly what does 12'th note ET mean?
Sorry, 12 note ET is 12 note equal temprement. It is the octave divided into 12 equaly spaced divisions in terms of pitch. The reality is that a perfect 3rd or 5th or any other precise harmonic interval does not fall on those divisions of the scale. I can explain the maths if anyone is interested. The net result is that in 12 note equal temperement no interval except the octave is actually mathematically or harmonically "correct".
 
oh, ok i didn't realise it was called that way.

is that what bach was referring to in 'the well tempered clavier'?
 
ggunn said:
??? I think most folks would hear the diff between A-440 and a 450 Hz tone: that's nearly a quarter tone. Perhaps you meant to use the term "cents" instead of "Hz".

Sorry - I'm slipping. Cents is what I was going for. :o

Btw, Muttley, can you clear something up for me: ET is a compromise, I get that; I have done some reading on ratios versus the 12 tone system, and understand the changes made to reconcile the two.

However: Beyond that, is the fretting of a guitar a compromise also? I mean, a compromise beyond ET, in that fret position needs to be slightly adjusted to suit each string as best it can?
 
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