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Okay....finished my first build. Will post pics of it. There are some attached to this thread. I haven't gone too far into setup because I have an intonation issue that I do not know how to interpret. I am hoping someone can look at this and tell me, based on experience and a 'yeah I did that' kinda thing, what exactly to do. I apologize for the not so clear pic of the data but it's the best I could force my scanner to come up with.

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

I just thought of something.....I am headed out to the shop to check how square the nut is to the fret board.

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

From you're picture of you're notes, your string heights at the nut seem high to me (assuming that measurements are at the nut). I shoot for 0.022" on the low E and 0.018" at the high E. This could certainly cause your "intonation problem" as you have to push down the string more, which adds more tension to the string thus making it sharp. As you move up the neck there is less tension on the string (say fretting at the 12th fret) so the notes won't be as sharp as they are closer to the nut.

One thing I do when fine tuning the intonation is capo the strings at the 2nd fret (this eliminates the nut all together and stretches the strings) and use the harmonic at the 14th fret. Then you can fine tune the nut a tiny bit if you want to but usually it's not necessary.

So, a couple of questions. How confident are you on the location of the frets? The saddle?

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Hey Rod....thanks for replying. I was beginning to think no one was going to answer at all.

The fret locations are dead on for the scale. I have checked them 3 times with a Stewmac fret scale. The saddle is located properly also. I know this because the open note and the note at the 12th fret have almost no deviation from each other on the tuner. I am not using a tuner with little green and red lights either.

I wish I had a capo.

Chris

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

Hey Rod....thanks for replying. I was beginning to think no one was going to answer at all.

The fret locations are dead on for the scale. I have checked them 3 times with a Stewmac fret scale. The saddle is located properly also. I know this because the open note and the note at the 12th fret have almost no deviation from each other on the tuner. I am not using a tuner with little green and red lights either.

I wish I had a capo.

Chris

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There is no difference between the man that thinks he can....and the man that thinks he cannot.

My guess is the height of the strings at the nut.

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"There's really no wrong way, as long as the results are what's desired." Charles Fox

"We have to constantly remind ourselves what we're doing....No Luthier is putting a man on the moon!" Harry Fleishman

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Hi Sniggly;

I wasn't able to enlarge your "notes" pic, but from the photo it looks like there is a gap of sorts under each string on the nut..? I would make sure the break point of the strings is on the leading edge of said nut, and not a little back of it, (scale is measured from the face of nut [break point] to 12th fret and doubled, plus compensation.
If you are noting sharps after open tuning, it sounds like your nut/break point is back too far from the leadig edge of the nut. This will cause the following fretted notes to read sharp. Also as Rod pointed out, the action sounds too high at the nut, further lengthening the strings.Fromwhat I see (hardly) I bet your "B" string is the worst?

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Nehemiah Covey
www.coveysacoustics.com

I had exactly this problem doing the compensation on a 12 string......get the string height at the nut to final working height before working out your compensation.

Its a frustrating learning experience isnt it? I had to re-rout my saddle slot.

Cheers Martin

One more thought or 2 actually , what is the compensation angle that you used, and what is the scale length . If you placed the saddle to the doubled length of the actual scale , you will be sharp, If your angle is too low you will be sharp or flat in a few strings.
john hall

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John Hall
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