Taylor 314CE - Intonation Issue

[pops]

If the action is not too high, i would check the relief in the neck. The truss rod is only there to adjust relief it is NOT an action adjustment, but it affects action and intonation. It could have changed from shipping or playing or humidity or whatever, it could have changed. Fret your low E on the first and 12th fret and look at the space between the 6th or 7th fret top and the bottom of the string. If it is more that a couple of thousands it is too much and could add to your problem and should be adjusted before doing anything else anyway. Your high E is maybe .012 it should be less that the high E string is by 2/3's. or around .003-.004.

[B. Howard]

Let's say we have a guitar that has been previously set up and intonated by comparing the harmonic and fretted note at the 12th. Most notes as fretted will be close to but not on exact pitch. Some off as far as 10 cents but most under 5 on a well made guitar.

Now lets say the player wants/needs a change in action height. We are going to raise it to allow bigger bends. We will now need to reset the speaking length of the string (intonation) because now when fretted at the 12th the string will be stretched farther and thereby increase pitch. We will now need to increase the speaking length slightly to achieve our goal of balancing out the error. There is a direct correlation between speaking length, action and intonation. The intonation has changed in this case because we have adjusted the action height.. Most electric guitars have bridges that are designed to be adjusted and provide ample means to do so. On a traditional archtop jazz box the entire bridge assembly is free to be moved as needed.

But on a flat top guitar the saddle is fixed. Fairly easily adjusted for height but not for speaking length. One can carve the edge where the string makes contact to make adjustments but the range of these is rather small as the entire saddle is only 3/32" in most cases and you need to leave enough material for the string to rest on so the edge does not chip. This often leads to certain strings being better intonated than others. Now you can cut in a wider bone and attain more adjustment. Or sometimes you can take advantage of the correlation between all these factors previously mentioned and use the easy adjustment you already have. If the action can be adjusted slightly up or down to attain better intonation without affecting playability in any major way that is the easiest path. I have found that about a 1/64" change in action height will shift intonation by around 5 cents.