Intonation on a nylon string

[815C]

I've got the itch to acquire a decent nylon string guitar, but I'm having trouble finding one with great intonation. Seems every nylon string I've played in the $1k - $2k range sounds out of tune if you play this chord...

x-10-12-12-12-10

Do I need to go higher in price, or just preserver in the search?

Thx!

[Garthman]

Originally Posted by 815C

I've got the itch to acquire a decent nylon string guitar, but I'm having trouble finding one with great intonation. Seems every nylon string I've played in the $1k - $2k range sounds out of tune if you play this chord...

x-10-12-12-12-10

Do I need to go higher in price, or just preserver in the search?

Thx!

Most guitars go a little bit out of tune when you play them. The act of pressing down the strings on the fretboard usually causes the notes to go slightly sharp. Also, when you are playing chords, the act of adjusting the fingers to fret all the strings often causes "bends" in one or more of the strings and, of course, some strings will be fretted at different distances from the fret than other strings.The higher up the fretboard you play, the greater the distance the strings have to be pressed down and this often increases the effects.

You can improve the situation by developing your fretting technique so that you use the minimum amount of pressure to fret the strings. This can help but it won't totally solve the problem.

It's really just the nature of the beast - and, for me, it's one of its charms.

[815C]

Originally Posted by Garthman

Most guitars go a little bit out of tune when you play them. The act of pressing down the strings on the fretboard usually causes the notes to go slightly sharp. Also, when you are playing chords, the act of adjusting the fingers to fret all the strings often causes "bends" in one or more of the strings and, of course, some strings will be fretted at different distances from the fret than other strings.The higher up the fretboard you play, the greater the distance the strings have to be pressed down and this often increases the effects.

You can improve the situation by developing your fretting technique so that you use the minimum amount of pressure to fret the strings. This can help but it won't totally solve the problem.

It's really just the nature of the beast - and, for me, it's one of its charms.

Very true.

I studied classical guitar in college, but haven't owned one since. Yet as I've been a serious player for decades I think I can fret chords with the best of them. What I'm talking about is intonation that makes you wince - ouch - really bad. It seems like for a grand you could get a guitar that doesn't sound BAD at the 12th fret.

[Garthman]

Originally Posted by 815C

Very true.

I studied classical guitar in college, but haven't owned one since. Yet as I've been a serious player for decades I think I can fret chords with the best of them. What I'm talking about is intonation that makes you wince - ouch - really bad. It seems like for a grand you could get a guitar that doesn't sound BAD at the 12th fret.

I don't think you need to spend that much. Yamaha classical guitars are excellent and very reasonably priced. They also (usually) come with a saddle compensated for the G string which helps intonation.

[wcap]

This seems to be a common problem with classical guitars. None of the ones I have seen have had compensated saddles (I guess some do - sounds like some of the Yamahas do based on the post above - I just have never seen one).

The G and the B strings (the G especially) tend to be problematic. They tend to not match the 12th fret harmonics when you fret them at the 12th string, even if the other strings do.

My guitar repair guy did a bit of compensation of my saddle for those two strings, and this helped, but the saddle was not thick enough to do this compensation as completely as I would have liked.

He also suggested using wound strings for those two strings (the 2nd and 3rd strings) and this helped quite a bit too (though I don't do this anymore). Savarez makes wound 2nd and 3rd strings you could try. Actually, on my guitar with the partially compensated saddle (which nearly fixed the intonation problem), the wound strings helped a bit too much! Without the compensated saddle I'm guessing the wound strings might get it just about right.

This whole intonation problem used to bother me a lot with my classical (which is a Spanish-made guitar that is just wonderful otherwise), but for whatever reason it usually does not bother me much anymore. I think a big part of what has happened is I have gotten better at tweaking the tuning, and my technique is better (see below).

Still, if I want really perfect intonation way up the neck I probably will go to one of my steel string guitars.

One thing that helps a lot on a classical guitar is to tweak the tuning. If I tune all 6 strings using a tuner the guitar sounds awful. But if I use harmonics to do the tuning, and then tweak it a bit further I can get it to sound MUCH better. I use the tuning technique that I learned from this web page - scroll down toward the bottom of the page: http://classicalguitarbuilder.com/ma...ewsletter.html

Sometimes one needs to tweak the tuning a bit specifically for playing a particular piece or in a particular key (but I mostly don't do this).

Also, though this is not always possible, I think really good classical players are probably adjusting the pitches of the notes a little bit in a dynamic way as they play (this works better if a note is a bit flat relative to the others than if it is sharp, obviously, since you can't bend a note flat!). I think I now do a bit of this myself without even thinking about it (but when an experienced guitar player at the guitar shop first suggested this to me as a solution I thought it sounded preposterous!).

I hope this helps.

[wcap]

Originally Posted by Garthman

I don't think you need to spend that much. Yamaha classical guitars are excellent and very reasonably priced. They also (usually) come with a saddle compensated for the G string which helps intonation.

Perhaps I just have not played the right Yamaha classical, but none of the ones I have played have impressed me, and some (which possibly were really low end ones?) were simply awful (I'm not talking about intonation here, but rather overall tone and responsiveness, etc). In my experience doing classical guitar shopping, when you start getting a bit over the $1K mark the quality of the guitars gets to be significantly better. I have not found 1K guitars to necessarily differ much in sound from, say, 3K guitars though (just based on the collection of guitars I had access to to try out). I have never played a classical guitar more expensive than about 3K - I think I'm probably better off not knowing!

[dwalton]

I bought a very nice Aparicio AA-100 (cedar/RW) from Todd (fitness1) several months back. Todd did a great (and time-consuming) job of adjusting the saddle contact points, and the guitar has perhaps the best intonation of any classical I've owned. Low action, no buzzing, and solid intonation up and down the neck.

[815C]

I had a cheap Alvarez classical that was given to me. It was a factory second. I needed a classical on a session (it was for a Veggie Tales project - remember them?) a few years ago and I took it along.

The song required me to play both in open and up to the 7th position. We ended up having to retune the guitar and punch in the sections where I was playing up the neck because of the intonation.

I have an arrangement I want to record on a classical guitar and that

x-10-12-12-12-10

voicing is prominent in the arrangement. I'm thinking there's got to be a reasonably priced classical out there that will let me play that chord in tune.

[Solosdad]

This guitar has amazing intonation and a street price of $1800. Dreamguitars has a good youtube demo. You can purchase one right now at Gryphon stringed instruments in Palo Alto. An amazing guitar.

[WaddyT]

For just this reason, I and some other builders I know, double compensate the saddle. Every string requires some compensation for things to be closer to correct intonation in the higher frets. Doing what I'm talking about though requires a bit thicker saddle than many production guitars have. My saddles are 2.5 mm thick which allows for an e that is practically not compensated, slight compensation for the b, just over 1 mm for the g, back out to none at the D, sloping back to about 1 mm at the E. Works really well, thought every guitar requires tempered tuning, just like a piano. The only way to get perfect intonation is one of those moveable fret jobs, as the fret calculations are based on averages.

Not easy to see, but here is one of my bridges with the compensated saddle.

[corbetta]

you can't bend a note flat!

You'd be surprised...actually you can, by "pushing" the string towards the saddle.

I'd recommend finding the best classical guitar builder in your area and having him work on the nut+saddle of your instrument. My guess is that unless the bridge was glued in an incorrect location (sometimes it happens), a skilled luthier should be able to at least improve the intonation of a $1k classical.

[mc1]

Originally Posted by 815C

I've got the itch to acquire a decent nylon string guitar, but I'm having trouble finding one with great intonation. Seems every nylon string I've played in the $1k - $2k range sounds out of tune if you play this chord...

x-10-12-12-12-10

as opposed to this chord, how does each note fare separately?

in other words, is the a-string 10th fret sharp/flat? the d-string at the 12th? etc, etc.

i'm interested as to why this chord is so important, vs., say,

x-x-5-7-8-7 and reaching up to the 10th fret.

Originally Posted by corbetta

You'd be surprised...actually you can, by "pushing" the string towards the saddle.

....

i'll have to try this.

[AfterViewer]

Originally Posted by Garthman

I don't think you need to spend that much. Yamaha classical guitars are excellent and very reasonably priced. They also (usually) come with a saddle compensated for the G string which helps intonation.

TRUE! A 3 or 4 year old Yamaha for sure. Some newer production models have been reviewed to be less favorable. QC?

[kosulin]

There is no simple resolution to your issue.
1. You may need to apply compensation at saddle which is very rarely done satisfactory on factory made guitars. You also need to know that compensation is string type dependant, and you may need to have separate saddle for nylon and carbon strings if you use both types. The same is true for string tensions, but for much lesser degree.
2. Any conventional guitar, not just nylon, is fretted as an equal temperament instrument. This means that most notes sound slightly out of tune. If this chord is so important, try to tune the guitar for perfect octave instead of perfect fifth. This would help with this specific chord, but others may sound worse.
As one guitar luthier said, if you want a perfectly tuned guitar, you have to switch to playing violin.

[wcap]

Originally Posted by kosulin

.....You also need to know that compensation is string type dependant, and you may need to have separate saddle for nylon and carbon strings if you use both types. The same is true for string tensions, but for much lesser degree.....

Interesting point that I had not thought of, but it makes sense. For tone and volume reasons I have switched from nylon to high tension Savarez Corum Alliance (which I guess are not nylon?). I wonder whether that has something to do with me not being bothered so much by the intonation on my guitar now (I'm pretty sure it had standard nylon strings on it at first, and for the first few string changes). Perhaps these Savarez strings just happen to match up with my guitar's current setup better?