2015-11-28

Setting the intonation

After I had done all of the other settings, it came to the final part - the one that I was most afraid of, as it would "make or break" all my guitar-maiking efforts:
Setting the intonation. Now it would prove if the pickup and bridge were positioned properly, the string through holes in the right position and the guitar playable after all.

I tuned the guitar, then (in order not to bend the strings sideways) placed a capo on the 12th fret, to see if it would play a clean octave.
It turned out that the tone was too high on the 12th fret, i.e. I hade to make the strings longer by moving the bridge saddles away from the neck, using the phillips screws at the end of the bridge.

Starting from the low e string and working my way up, I tuned, placed the capo and checked intonation, using a guitar tuner as an additional aid.


As there was one bridge saddle for two strings each, I tried to do it for both sides at once, in order to find a good compromise setting for both strings.
Lucky enough,. as I was using compensated bridge saddles, I could achieve quite a balanced setting.

Turns out the bridge position was ok, and once I did a final tuning, I was surprised and really glad how nice the guitar sounds after all, with a very much balanced sound across all strings!

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