Intonation on cheap and expensive guitars

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Just curious,

I spent the better part of a week setting the intonation on my Avarez strat copy. I would think it was right, and come back later, and it wasn't.

I found out it couldn't be set at the twelve fret, because this is only good for lead, one note at a time. I had to compomise, to make chords at the low end of the neck sound in tune, the worst seemed to be going from C to D chords. Also chords up the neck, this is why it took so long, thats a lot of chords.

I have come to the conclusion that perfection can not be achieved with intonation.

Questions: Do expensive guitars have to be compromised in this manner? Has anyone found a guitar with perfect intonation?

I have a feeling that a lot of you have gone through this, it is very frustrating.
 
well I certainly went through those gyrations. I even posted a query on the topic a few months ago, "seeking perfect intonation", because I could not find a compromise.

I was dealing with the neck of a Gibson Les Paul Studio.

And to compound the complication of the process, one can attempt to compensate for string flexure as I did. This makes a big difference on my particular neck (that is, how hard you choose to fret the notes and detune everything.)

I also find that perfect intonation today means little tomorrow. I fuss with this almost every time I change strings.

solution anyone, other than a valium?
 
My understanding is that a guitar is a messy instrument two ways - first, perfect intonation doesn't/can't exist, and second, all the harmonics and overtones make for a very complex sound. So, you cut your losses two ways - you get the most expensive instrument you can afford, and you accept the fact that guitars are not perfectly tunable instruments. When I bought my present guitar, it was because I liked the sound, the feel, and the intonation. Forget what it looks like.
 
The problem you're running into is called 'tempered tuning' and has nothing to do with intonation.

To set the intonation, do it by individual strings. Sound the open string and then the octave, and make them sound in tune by adjusting the bridge saddle (my preference is to have the unwound strings sound marginally sharp at the 12th fret, but that's just my weird ears) (c:]

Okay, you're done with intonation.

All western instruments are tuned to compromise and therefore are slightly out of tune in every key except those instruments that have no designated stops (e.g. violin, trombone, etc). This has to do with the intervals between the notes - it was what Bach addressed in 'The Well-Tempered Klavier'.
A piano is tuned to play in tune 'as close as possible' for all keys. It is why different keys have a different 'personality'

For example, it wasn't by accident that Beethoven wrote the Moonlight Sonata in C#minor - it is the most deliciously melancholy and resonant of keys.

Generally, the sharp keys (G, D, A, E, B) are bright and jangly and 'happy' and the flat keys (F, Bb, Eb, Ab, Db) are more subdued and 'melancholy'.

The only other thing that may be happening is if you are fretting the strings in such a way that you are bending the strings out of tune.

Your best shot if playing live is:
Use a tuner and get in tune - and then live with the results - you probably won't notice.
If recording:
Use the tuner to get close, and then use your ears to fine-tune to the key of the song.

Checking and (if required) adjusting the intonation on your guitar when you put on new strings is a good habit to adopt.


... and no, there's nothing wrong with your ears (c:]

foo
 
I think perfect intonation could be achieved, only if the frets could be adjusted,each fret would have to have six seperate adjustments. Maybe at least in the lower frets where all the standard chords are played.

Who wants to be rich!!!
 
GT
Here's how to do it.First,adjust the curve of your string saddles to match the radius of your fingerboard.Fender type guitars have a fingerboard radius of about ten feet,I think.Pretty round.Gibson type necks are much flatter.By eye,adjust your saddles to conform to the curve of the neck.
Correct intonation is simple and involves matching the location of the twelvth fret harmonic with the fretted note at the same position.
Hand held type tuners are not suitable to the task.The margin of orror with commercial units is + or - 3 Hz.On my desk at work sits a Peterson strobe tuner accurate to 1 cent.But on my pc is a shareware program called tunelab97 accurate to 1/100 cent (use any browser to get this great piano tuning program w/historical templates,streach tuning etc.)
Once you have an accurate tuner,see if the the 12th fret harmonic matches up with the fretted note.It will be flat sharp or in tune.If the fretted note is flat of the harmonic,move the saddle toward the headstock.If the fretted note is sharp,move the saddle toward the bridge.When the harmonic and the fretted note match,the string is intonated.
Any factory produced guitar has the frets laid out according to a mathematical law.If you follow this procedure,you can correctly intone your guitar.
Standard guitars can be intonated by filing the saddle to move the string contact point back or foreward.
Tom
 
I'm going with pchorman, and Dobro on this one. The twelve fret thing will only work, if the rest of the frets are perfectly placed.

Porchman has a Les Paul that's not right, $1000.00 plus, and it can't play all chords in tune, at the same time. What a rip!! This has nothing to do with the twelve fret, this is fret placement over the whole neck.

Dobro's right the hell with brand names, go for the one with the best intonation, out of tune chords suck!!

The twelve fret is only good for the twelve fret, the rest of the frets be damned.
 
Perfection can't ever be reached, but you can come close.
Anyone who says setting the intonation at 12th fret only puts things in place around the 12th fret isn't doing it right. The process of setting intonation sets the scale length for the whole neck, so if you set each string right it will work.

That said DON'T USE 12TH FRET!!!! Any good guitar tech knows that 19th fret is far more accurate. It's closer proximity to the bridge exagerates the differences between the fretted and the harmonic versions. When you use 12th fret, you get overtones from both sides of the string because they're theoretically the same note.

Also, be careful before buying a guitar. I've encountered many guitars from major manufacturers (Fender Mexicans especially), where the bridge wasn't mounted correctly so that the high saddles couldn't intonate properly.

Jeff
 
Actually,

I beleive that if I had to use one certain fret to set intonation, I would use the seventh fret. Except for the G string which would be the eighth fret.

This would be to check the octave strech from the next lower open string down. This would at least be the center of the neck. This puts you closer to where chords are than the twelve fret. This would ensure that the setting is correct in the center, a happy medium as it where.

Pchorman,

Have you tried this method yet? It might help get you a little closer. Then you can fine tune by ear from there.

By the way I think in this situation, by ear will take you much closer than any tuning machine. I once had my guitar set by a "pro" at a music store, using a strobescopic tuner, using the twelve fret method. Chord to chord corectness was way off.
 
Please fellows,cool your jets.
It looks like there is a lot of confusion about intonation.
"Don't use this fret use that one".Fret placement is determined by a mathematical law.The distance and placement of frets is not subject to variation or fooling around.Any instrument made by a factory with a name you have heard of will have placed the frets in the correct position,especially a Gibson Les Paul!
As to why the 12th fret is used,that is where the first overtone is located,an octave above the fundamental.I have intonated many guitars and seen other techs do this simple adjustment and in each and every case the job was done by using a strobe tuner to compare the harmonic at the 12th fret with the fundamental of the same string,moving the string saddle untill the notes match.This is the standard method across every brand of guitar.
Those who question this can easily verify for themselves.Call your local shop and speak to the tech.Ask him how does he intonate a guitar.Do a little internet research and be sure.This is not a tough one and I'm surprised by the disagreements about this common procedure.
 
Tom's right guys... but someone else also brought up the completely correct point of "tempered tuning". Part of the guitar's characteristic is the fact that a chord may not be 100% in tune in all the different voices its played in. Intonation is a bit of a compromise... but it is not SO much of a compromise that it is WAY out of tune (there may only be some slight dissonance in certain voicings).

If a guitar is exhibiting extreme tuning issues - it may be a combination of many factors, not just intonation. Fret wear, neck alignment, bridge saddle position, zero nut depth all have a factor.

The one problem with bringing a guitar in to a tech is the fact that they won't fret notes with the same pressure as you and THAT alone can throw off intonation from your own standpoint - although it would have been properly intonated when the tech plays it.

Bruce Valeriani
Blue Bear Sound
 
Thank you Bruce for a calming voice of reason.
Tempering is a tricky business.Every guitar player I know learned to tune using his ear and "mean"tempered tuning.Play the fifth fret and match up to the next string.Or compare the 7th and 5th fret harmonics on adjacent strings.But if you tune carefully to an accurate tuner you won't have to worry about the first finger G# in an E chord sounding off (sound familiar?)
So far so good.Now it gets tricky.The harmonic series of any musical instrument except a vibrating column of air (flute,sax,etc,)will be OFF PITCH.Think about it this way.When you touch your finger lightly to a string to produce a harmonic,you have halved the distance but NOT THE MASS.The string "senses" this excess mass which pulls the harmonic away from sounding an exact multiple of the fundamental.
Professional tuners compensate for this with a technique called "streach tuning".The low notes are flatted and the high notes are sharped a TINY bit.Go to Steinway or any piano website and you can get templates for streach tuning.This makes the harmonics "lie down" in the overall bloom of tonality and not annoy folks (think of all the dissonant harmonics in a church bell and you'll see what I mean).
Intonation and tempering allow even inexpensive axes to play perfectly in tune up and down the length of the neck (Buzz Fieten eat your heart out)
regards
Tom
 
Good points all,

I would like to give an example, of the compromise I had to make on my guitar. I am talking about the G string, because I think it is the biggest offender in every guitar that I have ever played, intonation wise.

Example:

Set the G string correctly at the twelve fret, now go from a standard C chord (where the G string is open) to a D chord (where the G string is closed to the second fret). The G string closed to the second fret will allways ring sharp. So now here's where you have to compromise.

The compromise is as follows:

You have to pull back on the G string saddle, which will make the G string slightly flat at the twelve fret, but slightly less sharp at the second fret. This will still not be perfect but it will help. Now you will have to compromise tune the G string to go from C chord to D chord.

In other words just compromise tuning isn't enough, you also have to compromise tune the saddle. How much you compromise the saddle will probably depend on how much lead playing you do, or how bad the chord changes sound.

The wound lower strings seem to be much less of a problem, but the upper G, B, and E, need compromise tuning at the twelve fret.

The bottom line: perfection at the twelve fret, is not nearlly as important as chord changes.

This I beleive to be a real world example, at least with every guitar I have ever tried.
 
Tom:
Try this for yourself. Take a guitar where the intonation is off, and check the difference between the fretted and harmonic at 12th. Now do the same at 19th fret. Notice that any discrepancy is exagerated at the 19th fret. Some things that sound pretty close @ 12th are pretty off @19th.
The reason most people use 12th is that you can do it without your tuner being chromatic, whereas @19th the pitches are BEADF#B. But you shouldn't even need a tuner because your matching up pitches to each other. The scale of the string doesn't change unless it's out of tune enough for the neck to shift. The fact that these store techs you've seen need a tuner to identify which is higher shows either how much greater the margin of error is at 12th fret, or how bad an ear they have.
Jeff
 
I always wondered what caused the slightly sharp A on the 2nd fret of the G string. This was true for all my guitars, and now that GT pointed out the very example that bothers me most, it must be true for most. I have thought about this and can only offer one weak explanation:

I noticed that this particular note of the 2nd fret is always the first to wear out on my guitars. It seems to be the most popular spot on the neck. (Check yours and tell me if I'm off base here.) So? Well that worn fret is now slightly flattened and wider than the rest because the frets are beveled at 30 degrees or so when new, and in some cases are even rounded. So? Well, a wider fret means the string is effectively shorter than it should be when fretted there!

This slight effect with the most commonly worn fret raises it's pitch enough to piss us off.

Does anyone disagree that this is not at least a second order effect? Of course it doesn't explain any other intonation problems, just perhaps the most common one we all hate.

Now some other thoughts: the 12th fret is only favored because it is halfway between saddle and nut. So, when a harmonic is played there, the standing wave on the string vibrates at twice the frequency. It actually vibrates at this frequency on both halves of the string (for a lightly tapped artificial harmonic), but of course only one side has the pickups.

It is impossible for the 12th fret to "speak for" every fret. Yes, there is a mathematical law dictating fret mounting placement, but no tooling equipment or human assembler in any manufacturing plant can lay each fret perfectly where they belong. There's a tolerance to everything, and in many cases the variations produce audible differences.

I feel that an accurate (e.g. quartz or strobe) chromatic tuner should be applied to every note on the neck. It will never reveal perfection. Tradeoffs are needed between those notes we play the most and those notes which are out of whack.

Can anyone out there play a barre chord and apply the exact same amount of pressure to each note each time? No - too mood dependent. Even if the neck were perfect, we would face the variations of applied pressure.

Let's just give up and play.
 
best advice would be to lower your action, set up your truss as good as you can, and THEN do the intonation. Intonation gets crappy on the higher frets if your strings are too far away from the neck. So get your strings as low as you are comforatble with, and then intonate with a good tuner as said above.
 
As far as the comment made by foo, that some keys are naturally upbeat while others are subdued, isn't this simply due to what our ears have grown "used to" in standard concert pitch?

A so called flat note like the F you mentioned is really a sharpened E in disguise. Wasn't it a frequent discjockey ploy at one time to speed up the records by about this much to make the tunes sound a little more upbeat on their radio stations? (I guess the speed up in tempo can be partially at play, but sharper notes also sound more livened.)

This is an interesting subject and it sounds like foo is up on the theory behind it. I'd like to know more about what's behind the supposedly natural moods of each of the western keys.

Thanks
 
My theory on sharp vs flat keys is that the # keys sound happier because we're able to use more open strings. Open strings sound brighter than fretted notes, and the first 5 flats represent all our open strings (BEADG). With sharps however the first 2 are F & C, so with equal number of accidentals up to 5, there are always 3 more open strings. (Eg 3 sharps you can use 5 open strings(EADBE), vs 3 flats where you can only use 2, (DG)).

As for the worn fret theory, that would make the note flat not sharp. More likely is a worn nut allowing the string to resonate further into the nut. Notice it mostly happens on unwound strings.
Jeff
 
Pchorman,

Finally some one understands, that there is a problem.

I disagree about the worn fret, because I have played brand new guitars, that have this same problem. The only logical answer, is that the second fret is to close to the bridge causing the sharp A off the G string. Not to complicated really. Maybe the actual second fret placement itself had to be a compromise, to make the other stings ring truer, I don't know.

I definatelly agree about factory tolerances, how do we know how sloppy they are with fret placement?

You should get in touch with Gibson, and see what they have to say about it, that was an expensive guitar, and you deserve to know the truth. If you do let us know.

Meanwhile you may want to compromise tune the bridge to find a better balance between sharp and flat.

GT
 
I can see that the wizards of arcane guitarology are having fun bamboozling each other with all these novel theories.I apologise for intruding with actual professional experience,having intonated countless guitars over 30 years of practice in music stores and as a factory tech.
Anyone interested in the actual standard method should refer to my earlier post.
But don't let me detract from the free exchange of misinformation.Knock your lights out.
Tom
 
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