In a previous post I said I was taking my guitar into the shop to have the intonation (among other things) set. So what is this thing called intonation?

Intonation refers to the notes on the guitar being in tune all the way from open to the high end of the fretboard. If a guitar’s intonation is set properly every E note played on the fretboard will have the proper pitch. If the intonation is off, usually the notes at the nut end of the fretboard will be correct, but they will slowly become sharp or flat the further you move up the fretboard.

Continue reading What is Intonation on the Guitar?

Serg has posted some great information about fret buzz on his site Guitar Daily. He goes into perfect detail on the causes of fret buzz and how they can be rectified.

To sum up his posts causes could be:

1. Old strings
2. New strings that have not settled
3. Action is too low
4. Bent or warped neck
5. Inconsistent fret heights

If you are experiencing buzzing on your frets I suggest you head over and read his posts.
Top Reasons For Guitar Fret buzz
Fret Buzz - Guitar Action
Fret buzz - low and high frets
and Fret Buzz: Neck Relief, Bow And Back Bow at Guitar Daily.

So when I dropped my guitar off on Tuesday the tech said he would have it for me by the end of the week. I hadn’t heard anything (on my cell) on Friday and I was getting a little upset that I would be guitarless for the weekend. However, when I got home he had left a message on my answering machine. I ate dinner with my girlfriend and then we went to pick it up.

The repairs were $107.99 CAD + %7 taxes. This was a little bit steeper than I had expected. I didn’t think it was going to take him that long to do the repairs. However, it turns out that I really did a bad job installing the EMG pickups that I bought last Christmas (a year ago), so he had to reinstall them as well.

When I got the guitar home and plugged it in it all made sense and it was 200% worth it. I would have paid twice as much. I mean it sounds better than when I bought it new. I looked down the neck, and it’s perfectly straight. Now I can see what he saw when he looked at it for that half second when I took it in.

The strings stay in tune all the way up the fretboard. I checked by plucking each string open, and then plucking them while they were fretted on the 12th fret. The pitches sound the same. I can tell the bridge was adjusted because the high strings are lower and the base strings are a bit higher. Also the saddles have been moved. The pickups are working great as well. The tone is much clearer and I get less noise at high volumes. I think he set the height of the pickups as well because the sustain is about 100 times better.

I’m really happy I took it in. It was totally worth it and I’ll probably have it looked at once a year. The next time it won’t be expensive because my pickups are all setup mint now. It’ll be cheaper to have the bridge/intonation set if needed.

I took my guitar into Guitar Works today for a setup. Here’s what I asked the tech to look at:

The Neck
Bridge height
Intonation
My Pickups

First off, I stared down the neck of my guitar for a good 5 minutes one day trying to tell if it was bowed and I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for though. When I took it into the shop the guy took all of 5 seconds looking at it to tell it was off. My girlfriend thinks he was playing on my ignorance to squeeze some money out of me, but he was obviously not short on business. So I don’t think that was the case.

I have Zakk Wylde EMG pickups in my guitar and I installed them myself. At the time I purchased them I didn’t have the funds to pay for them and have them installed professionally, so I did it myself. Now that I can afford it I have asked him to make sure I installed them properly. I have a feeling I didn’t do a very good job of installing them.

Finally, since I know the bridge adjustment went out when I installed my pickups, I have asked him to check the bridge height and set the intonation.

He told me he should have it done by the end of the week, so we’ll see how it goes.

I have been playing guitar for over 7 years now and I just bought my first guitar book. I have had tab books in the past, but never a book about guitars and how to play them.

The book has a section on guitar maintenance and repair which discusses topics like action and intonation. Although I have heard of these things before, when going through the steps to check them on my guitar I found it was a bit out. The book says some guitar shops will setup a guitar before it is sold, but if it is sold without being setup, the factory doesn’t always do a great job of it.

So I have decided to take my guitar in to have new strings put on, and have the intonation, bridge, and truss rod setup.

I’ll post back with how it goes.