Fun with Intonation (Spector Content)

[marnold]

While I love my Spector Performer, I was concerned about the intonation. The 12th fret was in tune, but the 24th went almost ~20 cents sharp. It'd be good until about the 15th fret when things would start to go south (or north, depending on your point of view). I thought for sure that if I moved the saddles away from the neck any more, the 12th fret would go flat. As it turned out, I was wrong. After about 20 minutes with a tuner and allen wrench, the whole neck is in tune. For those of you who say a bass doesn't need more than 14 frets, well, you're wrong. Neener, neener, neener.

Anyway, one "interesting" feature of the Spector Performer series is that it uses a different bridge from the rest of the Spectors. When I called their 800 number, even they weren't 100% sure on it. It's a nice bridge, heftier than a standard MIM Fender, but it's adjusted differently. There is an allen screw on the front of the saddle that locks the height adjustment of the bridge into place. There are two allen screws on either side of the part of the saddle that the string touches for adjusting the height.

There is a fourth allen screw behind that on the top of the saddle. That one locks the whole saddle in place. Loosening that one up allows the saddle to move freely so that the intonation can be adjusted. Unfortunately you have to loosen the strings to get at that screw. I found it helpful to make a small pencil mark where the saddle originally was. I found to my chagrin that it is easy to move the saddle when you just are trying to tighten the allen screw back down.

Thankfully unless you are jumping around with string gauges, intonation is a "set it and forget it" kind of thing.

[aeolian]

Actually I am surprised that the 12th fret won't go flat as you moved the saddle further away. I wonder why that is?

[marnold]

Actually I am surprised that the 12th fret won't go flat as you moved the saddle further away. I wonder why that is?
Puzzled me too. Granted, I didn't have to move it a ton. I had to fix my low E because it was quite sharp at the 12th fret. It was far enough off that I could hear it easily. Upon fixing that, I discovered to my amazement that the 24th was in tune too. So I went about adjusting the other three saddles. Having a strobe tuner would make this a lot easier, but for whatever reason my tuner seems to like my bass better than my guitars--at least on the open strings. Go fig.

Connected to this is that I find setting intonation to the harmonics to be almost completely worthless. I know that before I adjusted my low E, the 12th fret harmonic was spot on but the fretted note was sharp.

[marnold]

I decided to put new strings on my Floyd and fix the intonation in the process. Both E strings were right on, oddly enough. B was pretty close. The A, D, and G were good on the 12th fret but got increasingly sharp as you went up. The Speedloader makes it easier to adjust the intonation, but it's still a pain. I can't imagine what it must be like on an OFR *shudder* Thankfully I should be good to go now. That's a process I don't care to repeat any time soon.