As I am moving on with the set-up of my gear, I will cover here another important step of the guitar preparation: how to set the intonation.
Usually you may think that, as you have set the strings to tone, the guitar will play the proper sounds in all the conditions. But then, you engage in a solo and, you cannot understand why when you play from the G string to the B, the notes sound "shifted".... out of place. This actually happens very often with newbies and to the trained hears it is the direct evidence that your guitar is not well set-up, i.e. you have to set it to the proper intonation.
Why is the intonation changing? What is the intonation? And how to set the right intonation for your guitar?
Well, the intonation almost never changes as it represent an intrisic characteristic of the strings you are using coupled with your guitar. This means that it is most likely to change when you re-string your guitar, especially if you change the brand/gauge. This will be immediately clear if you understand something more about the intonation concept itself. Take a look at this (terribly awful) scheme I have drawn:
In the drawing you can see a schematic representation of a guitar. The string (whatever you prefer) runs from the nut to the bridge saddles and when you pick it, it takes the
traditional sinusoidal shape depicted above. Of course that is a simplification as it vibes with a milti wave pattern but bear with me....
The middle of the sinusoidal wave (green in the picture), happens to fall exactly
above the 12th fret (red line) so, if you put your finger on the string without pressing and pick it, you hear that characteristic "high pitch" sound that is called an "
harmonic". In the case where, like the picture above, the middle of the string (i.e. the middle of the wave) does not fall on the 12th fret, your guitar is not intonated. You may tune it how many times you like but when you lower to the 12th fret and below, it will progressively shift to the bad.
The good news are that when you buy a new guitar, it is very likely that they set it up for you and if they did not, it just takes you 10 minutes to bring it to the right tone. Here is what you should do to intonate your guitar:
- Tune the guitar
First of all, you need to
tune your guitar. This is very important and cannot be left behind. Start with a perfectly tuned guitar. One thing to note. If you have ever taken you guitar outside in winter, for example for playing with friends, you have probably noted that the guitars are
extremely sensitive to the temperature and humidity variations. You get to the studio/friend's house, tune the guitar and... in 5 minutes you end up with awful sounds coming at you from your amp... the worst point is that all the strings detune differently and the result is terrible. You know what I mean....
For this reason, you have to
play your guitar thoroughly before proceeding to set the intonation, just to avoid this problem.
I used the Behringer TU300 pedal tuner described in
this post.
- Check if it is already intonated.
As I said, it is very likely that your guitar is already intonated but to ascertain this, there is no other thing to do that actually check it with the tuner plugged in.
Place your finger
slightly touching the string right above the 12th fret and pick it. The tuner should show the
same letter of the string you are playing (E for the E, A for the A, well, you got it). If it does so for all the strings, than you don't need to intonate the guitar. If it doesn't, then proceed to the modification explained hereafter.
- Saddles regulation
The technique I explain here is for those bridges that resemble the Fender Stratocaster "
tremolo" type and it does not work for the Gibsons.... sorry. It should work with some modifications in the
Floyd Rose types too but you should then look for the screws to move for the settings. Here is a picture of the bridge on the ZO-3.
The factory settings looked good as you can see that both the thick 3 lower strings and the 3 thin ones are placed with this
jigged pattern 3 by 3. However, checking with the tuner 3 strings were slightly off. If you find one that is not intonated you just have to screw or unscrew the corresponding saddle's screw to get the total length shorter or longer depending on the situation. If the note is
higher than the needed, you have to
tighten the screw (make the string longer). If the note is
lower then you just
unscrew to shorten the overall length. Doing this you will have to
tune back the string so you can check how it sounds. You should proceed by trial and error until you get the right pitch in the harmonic when the string is properly tuned.
This is all you need to know about how to intonate a guitar and it indeed is an easy task that everybody can do. Remember that if you have an intonated guitar and you proceed to
lower its action, no guarantee is given that it will still be intonated after. As a general rule, every time you fiddle with the bridge, restring or change the guitar action, an intonation check is recommended but otherwise, being it a physical characteristic of the guitar/string combo itself, it is not affected by environmental changes so you will not need to intonate it when you go to play out. Lucky!
