action and intonation

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Permalink Reply by MichaelS Country Boy Guitars on May 16, 2012 at 1:42pm

Phyrigian Kid, fretless intonation, lol. I showed one to a guitar shop owner and while playing it he said I think the intonation is off at the 12th, I looked it him and said maybe your finger is off. Oh he says, maybe thats it. Still now sure if he was joking or not, very dry person.

After reading all the posts I must add that I do intonate my strings at the bridge with a slight angle also. Hey I want the notes to be close to the fret marks I burn in so carefully. 

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Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on May 16, 2012 at 7:15pm

:D
I had to grade four young ladies on their violin exams on Monday just past, an 'intonation' is the biggest criteria. They didn't build the suckers

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Permalink Reply by Grease Stains on May 16, 2012 at 9:17pm

  cute argument, but i suppose i could point out that the "intonation" me and darren are referring to involves the nut and bridge (being as we're both guitar players.). seeing as i mentioned the masking tape to mark the note positions on a fiddle, i think we both understand intonation pretty much just means proper string length; which can be changed with you fingers(or slide).  this is why i called the lap steels a red herring, coupled with the fact swamp dawg said he was fingering notes.

   i wouldn't think they built the suckers, but next time, move that bridge a few mm's outta place, and see what happens. it's not angled on violin for the same reason it's not angled on a uke, the scale it so short, however it's intonation is still "set". move the bridge and the scale completely changes. also as i remember, it's not wise to move the bridge off of the sound post, but thats a completely different discussion ..... and hilariously i saw a fretted fiddle just the other day in a local music shop. other than the frets and a slightly higher string height, it was a standard fiddle.

  in any case, i hope they stick with it, i've always had a soft spot for the fiddle (i'll always call it a fiddle..... cultural thing i suppose..) i quit when i was young because they ram celtic music down your throat at home, weather you like it or not. and if you don't play it juuuuuuust so, your doing it wrong. there is no lea way to make the song your own. they rip apart any bowing styles that aren't "the proper (apperantly "old") way. after 4 years, at 11 years old i told them all to f--k off and quit. the only bummer there was if i hadda stuck with it, i would have inherited my great grand fathers 200 year old fiddle. ( what a beauty). now it's wasting away in someone's closet. ah well. i found the guitar. :D

in the end i think it's more that your arguing semantics, not so much that your wrong. just saying. you don't wanna set your intonation, thats your business! ;) i'm gonna do whats been working for me just the same! lol

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Permalink Reply by Roadkill a.k.a. John Maw on May 16, 2012 at 8:25am

Hi.

The higher the nut the more you stretch the strings to fret them and this shows itself most at the frets nearest the nut. What is needed it to compensate the nut in the same way as the bridge is compensated at the other end. What this means is making the distance between the nut and the first fret shorter than the fret calculators say. The higher the nut, the more comes off between the nut and fret 1. All the other fret to fret distances remain as they were.

As far as I am aware nobody has made a calculator of how much the nut to first fret distance should be reduced for a given nut height, so it really is a case of try it and see.

Hope this helps.

John

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Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on May 16, 2012 at 11:17am

i looked at this with mine John. Unfortunately there are many many variables, just as there is at the bridge end. My good friend Glenn Reither is a fan of some calculator online which does return a compensated value at the bridge end, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's calculated so much as a coded logarithm based on experience. I know that Dianne, a builder I certainly respect, scootches her nut forward about 1/32.. As far as I'm concerned a zero fret intonates better, as you said yourself even from fret one everything is hunky dory it's only the nut needs adjusting.. Well a zero fret does this.. Its like ur capoed.. The nut is 'just another fret'...

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Permalink Reply by Roadkill a.k.a. John Maw on May 16, 2012 at 12:14pm

Hi Jef.

Am I right in thinking that using a zero fret limits you to a fairly low action (when seen from the point of view of slide players at least). The original poster (Swamp Dawg) was referring to using high action. I had assumed that this meant higher than could be achieved with a zero fret, although I am not sure what the highest fret wire is. Presumably the reason that the zero fret pretty much avoids these problems is because of the low action that results. This also explains why people who like a high action often don't like the feel of using a capo.

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Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on May 16, 2012 at 6:48pm

You can crank the action at the other end. All you guys who are finding it necessary to 'intonate' a Fretless gitt.. Well all I can say is you prolly need deeper nut slots too. If you want to finger on the fingerboard you ought be cranking the action at bridge end only. It won't present any issues at all unless you are 'squeezing' with your slide, which is sloppy technique and will pull any note out of tune. I can slide from a zero fret no problem at all. Also how often do you slide at fret one anyway? Only in exotic scales, phrygian, locrian and aeolian. All the best.

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Permalink Reply by Grease Stains on May 16, 2012 at 9:40pm

like i said before, i set my intonation so i can chord fretless. deeper nut slots? higher bridge? which is it??? (lol, just poking.) i think i also pointed out that a slide needs little or no pressure. 

and he swamp dog did clarify he was having the issue when fingers, not sliding.

at the moment i tune D A d f#, so i have a few chords and scales that hit the first fret, even if mostly on the f# string, be it frettless or fretted, i want that note in the same spot, so i don't have to fish for it on the fly.

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Permalink Reply by Grease Stains on May 16, 2012 at 11:56am

I was thinking, before your cut anything up, a good thing to ask might be how hard are you pushing down on the strings?
Seems irrelivant i know, but i can pull sharp notes out of a perfectly set up guitar because i'm pushing too hard. I''m no hulk either. Sometimes its more about the touch then the power. This is an assumption of frets on my part, but i tend to set my acoustic guitar up pretty high and have no issuses with it. 
Other than that, i would say just lower the nut slots a few thousands of an inch at a time till your happy, or have a happy medium. 
Good luck and have fun man!

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Permalink Reply by Swamp Dawg Primal Music on May 16, 2012 at 12:58pm

Just hard enough to get a clear, unmuffled note. The frets are "medium".

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Permalink Reply by Grease Stains on May 16, 2012 at 2:01pm

Ah right on. It was a lesson i slowly learned, figured it might help ya. Hahaha

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Permalink Reply by Swamp Dawg Primal Music on May 16, 2012 at 1:06pm

Whew, thanks, guys and gals, for all the feedback. Personally, I'm playing fretless with a slide and fingering, and it's set up nice. I put frets on all my builds since everybody wants them. I lower the action to achieve proper intonation (balancing nut and bridge), and they play well, but for myself I don't like using a slide on fretted gits, and was looking for a happy medium. I think I'll try super-low frets and see if the slide rides better on them, but I guess the action will always be on the low side to get clean notes at all frets. Hopefully the low frets will give me a touch more clearance. Probably I'll just have a fretted and unfretted git, then a reso, a wine-box 4 string, a blue one......

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