What Is Guitar Intonation And Why Is It Important?
An
obvious question? Yes! Worth talking about? Absolutely! At the
urging of my good friend Curtis Barbour I am visiting this topic again
because it's a subject that comes up lots. We'll look into in with a bit
more depth.
Intonation is the accuracy in which an electric guitar or bass can produce a fretted note
and the most important issue with any instrument. Setting the
intonation on a guitar is the act of adjusting the length of the strings
(by moving the bridge saddles) to compensate for the thickness of the
string and the stretching of a string due to pushing it down to the fret
board to produce a note. For our purposes here I will focus only on
electric instruments for now.
To
adjust the intonation of your guitar or bass guitar, you move the
bridge saddles toward or away from the fret board until the 12th fret
note and its harmonic are equal in pitch to the same open-string note,
which are exactly one octave apart. Accurate intonation is critical to
pitch quality. Pitch quality is essential to "in tune" playing.
Poor pitch quality = "out of tune" notes which in turn = poor musical presentation. Wouldn't you want to present your musical talents in the best way possible? Of course, you do.
Saddles
are not the only factor affecting poor intonation. There is the guitar
nut to consider. The guitar nut is the rectangular piece that the
strings lay on as they come off the headstock and onto the fret board.
Most of the time the nut is a bone, Tusq, or acrylic, but can be metal
(locking nut). NOW...if the nut is cut too high there will be intonation
problems.It must be perfect. The action or string height will be a
major factor in intonation. The farther you have to push a string to
meet the top of the fret the sharper the note-thus action-too high-sharp
notes-and intonation problems.
The other factor hardly considered but well worth adjusting is the
"neck bow". If the neck bow is too deep then there will be intonation
problems in the valley of the bow. The neck must be straight.
Now,
it is not necessary for a guitar player to know this at all. It is
essential however that the guitar possess this quality and maintain as
close to perfect intonation
as possible. Buying on looks alone can be very disappointing. If
however, you like an instrument for the looks but realize that you will
need to have it worked on to get it playable
then that is fine. It's best to speak to a Luthier or guitar builder
previous to any purchase. It's like to asking a mechanic which car he
would recommend before you walk into the show room to select one. You
can benefit from his first hand knowledge and experience and not have to
go it alone. After all the mechanic knows which cars breakdown.
by Rick Mariner
Labels: custom guitars Guitar repair by Guitar repair by Haywire Custom Shop guitars Haywire Custom Guitars Haywire Custom Guitars USA http://www.haywirecustomguitars.com/services.html
