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#1
10-23-2012, 08:05 AM
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Setup Question
All,
I recently purchased a new electric guitar. I took it to a guitar tech in my area a few days ago to have it setup, and brought it home yesterday. After playing the guitar for a little while, I noticed that some of the strings still sounded a little "off" when playing chords, although the guitar was in tune. I did a quick check of the intonation by playing an octave harmonic at the 12th fret of each string, and then fretting the 12th fret and plucking each string. I did this a few times with a tuner, and kept seeing that some of the strings were registering as sharp on the tuner when fretted at the 12th fret compared to the octave harmonic on the same fret. I'm no expert when it comes to setting up a guitar, but read that this is the basic way to check a guitar's intonation. Before I contact the guitar tech again to have him do additional work, is there anything else I should do to check the intonation on my own? Is there any reason why some of the strings would register as sharp after the guitar was setup? Thanks in advance for your help, as I am still learning the setup process. 
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#2
10-23-2012, 08:19 AM
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Not into electric guitars but a lot of them have intonation adjustment screws at the bridge. If sharp at the 12th fret,the saddle needs to move back.You are OK with checking the intonation the way you did,so if you are a bit handy try adjusting the saddle or saddles back a bit. When the guitar was worked on maybe the string heights etc were checked but not intonation. Maybe you ear is better then his. A good ear is both a blessing and a curse..............!!! Good luck with your work.
Tom
__________________
A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything
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#3
10-23-2012, 08:47 AM
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Re:
Thanks, Tom. One thing to note with the guitar in question is that it is a Gretsch G5420T Electromatic hollow body. It has a floating bridge, and my guitar tech attached some sort of double-sided tape to the bottom of the bridge to "anchor" it to the body of the guitar so that it won't move. That may have had some impact on the setup process, but that's just a guess. In any case, the guitar is going to have to go back to the shop.
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#4
10-23-2012, 08:49 AM
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The problem with this method of intonation is that every one has a different touch. When you fret the 12th fret to you press hard? Do you press lightly?
It's really best to do this your self till you get it right based on your touch.
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#5
10-23-2012, 08:58 AM
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If it looks like this, there are two factors that come into play in setting the intonation:
 One is the placement of the individual saddles that can be moved forward and back on a screw. The second is the position of the entire bridge. You/he can use whatever combination of positions that gives you the desired intonation. Setting the intonation on a guitar of that type is pretty basic: your guitar technician should not have let it go out of his shop that way.
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