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Thread: problem intonating guitar

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2009
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    Default problem intonating guitar

    I put new strings on my 82 fender strat:
    10/14/20/28/38/48 and have 4 springs on the whammy is working great.

    Now, with the new strings I'm trying to intonate the guitar.

    Only the high E and G string intonated. The other strings just wont intonate for some reason. It's reading just a tad bit higher on the tuner. So I tightened the screw, but the screw won't tighten anymore because the bridge part is all the way to the back. I followed a couple of the videos on youtube and doing it correctly, Am I doing something wrong?

    Any help is greatly appreciated.
    hl

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
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    Kent, UK
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    How high is the bridge above the body? You don't really want more than about 1/8th inch of air under the bridge plate. If it's way up it'll change the scale length. Use the claw screws to adjust height and fine tune the return to pitch.
    Electric: Fat strat > Korg PB > TS7 > DS1 > DD-20 > Cube 60 (Fender model)

    Acoustic: Guitar > microphone > audience

  3. #3
    Join Date
    May 2008
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    Quote Originally Posted by markb
    How high is the bridge above the body? You don't really want more than about 1/8th inch of air under the bridge plate. If it's way up it'll change the scale length. Use the claw screws to adjust height and fine tune the return to pitch.
    +1 on checking and, if necessary, adjusting trem height.

    Other things to check out for would be the string life - I've read that you should not try to intonate guitars with strings that are more that 1/3 of their life through.

    How are you checking the intonation? By 12th-fret-harmonic then a fretted 12th fret? Sometimes when you fret a guitar, you may fret it ever so slightly harder than necessary resulting in a slightly sharp pitch. Try using the open string as well as the harmonic and fretted 12th. But when you do fret it, make sure you fret it as you normally would so you intonate it to 'your touch'.

    Hope any of that helps. . .

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