Road King: I just got my 30x18 vel top
in the other day. Still have much soldering
and routing to do. Will post when finished.
BTW, killer board.
Dexter.Sinister: Wow! Nice job.
Ocean: Dang.
Enditol:
dank: Here’s mine; a couple of pedals have
have been removed and a few added. The
entire board is wired with Lavacables’ mini
ELC cable and the solderless plugs.
Intonation Question
dankayaker: Ok . . . I intonate with two
strobes and a Korg DT- 7. When I tune the
guitar I just tune all the strings normally,
then I hit the harmonic (12th fret). When I
do this I almost always notice that although
the tuner says my open strings are dead
on, the harmonic is a bit flat. So, I get very
different saddle positions depending on
wether I use the (open string-fretted 12th)
and the (12th fret harmonic - fretted 12th).
What’s correct I know there are other
methods (2–14th . . .etc) but I want to know
if the harmonic is the way to go, or the
open string method.
Bob V: Could it be there’s more attack on
the open plucked string than with the harmonic? The initial attack is always sharper
than when the note settles in. For what it’s
worth I like to use the open string and the
12th. Using the harmonic was probably the
thing to do when it had to be done by ear.
Eagle1: You need the Fretted note and
the open string to be in tune, then the
Harmonic will follow.
Tune open, then intonate the 12th fret note
with the saddle.
dankayaker: This has not been my finding. On all my guitars, when I tune the open
strings, then intonate the fretted 12th… my
12th harmonic will be a tiny bit flat.d
Eagle1: You can temper tune it (split the
difference,) but the guitar will sound better
if the fretted notes are spot on. Sounds like
your action is higher than it is tempered for.
Mike9: I use the fretted note as my reference. All the guitarists I know drive the string
to the board so that’s how I set theirs up. I
like to watch a person play and note where
they fret a note. Some are right up under the
fret some are in the middle—makes a difference especially if I have a neck with tall frets.
David Collins: In an theoretical ideal world,
with an infinitely flexible string, ideal constant
tension as the string stretches to a wave, and
the string solidly anchored at it’s ends to massive and rigid blocks, yes it would be true.
Back in the real world, take a string made
of metal with some internal stiffness, anchor
it to a neck and bridge that move, influencing how waves can be reflected back,
and a string that changes tension through
the course of a wave to varying degrees
depending on how and where it is struck,
then I would have to say false.
The difference can be great or slight, depending on each instrument and player. It can also
be different for different notes. For the most
part though, you’re just chasing the wind on
trying to make some imaginary perfection on
an imperfect piece of wood, with notes based
on a very imperfect scale. Tune open and
adjust the 12th, or the 10th, or the 15th, or
the 13th…. It doesn’t matter. Then you have
to decide whether to adjust to the attack or
the decay of each note. Do you pluck with a
pick or a finger. Or tune the string to the 12th
harmonic—it doesn’t really matter. You just
have to figure out which way works best for
you. There is no ultimate, authoritative, infallible method here. Setting good intonation
depends on the person doing it to have a feel
for working within that big big grey area we
call intonation. Even then, as “perfect” as you
try to make it, it’s still up to the player to play
it in tune in the end.
We’ve got a car with a bent frame that can
never have perfect wheel alignment, but for
some reason even though the front must
always be 1. 5 degrees off from the back we
feel compelled to spend hours making sure
it is exactly 1.50000000 degrees off. Kind
of seems pointless, eh?
