February 9, 2023

In this video, we inspect the guitar bridge saddle intonation adjustment screws, and see that the screws are too long to make the intonation adjustment without the screw touching the guitar string.

If the screw touches the string, theres a good chance the string will break there.

Theres no way this guitar was ever set up properly, because theres no way those saddles would ever adjust far enough back to get the adjustment right.

Consequently, this guitar would never be able to play all of the notes on the fingerboard “in tune”, and most of the notes would be very sharp because each strings’ scale length was too short.

When im done grinding down the intonation adjustment screws, and cutting the saddle springs shorter, this guitar (and guitar player) will be able to hit perfect pitch on every string, every fret.

This adjustment is very critical to the playability of the guitar!

If the intonation adjustment is not done correctly, then every note (on this particular guitar) will be sharp, and the guitar student will be practicing making sharp notes instead of in-tune notes.

If this adjustment isn’t done, you are setting up the guitar student to fail.

The student must practice hitting the perfect sounding note! The student can’t practice making sharp notes, and expect that to magically translate/transpose to perfect pitch!

When this adjustment is done correctly, the guitar student will have to bend the strings “slightly” up-to-pitch when they fret a note. By having to bend the notes up to pitch, the student develops the muscle memory, and hand-ear coordination required for perfect pitch.

This adjustment is so fundamental, yet it seems that most guitar players don’t give it the attention it deserves.

I would say that on every guitar ive ever worked on, this adjustment was never done correctly.

I have had online conversations with other guitar players, who poo-poo the idea of getting this done right, and just write it off as one of the features of a guitar.

Ive been told that no guitar is capable of having all of its notes in tune, so the best you can do is adjust your intonation for the hand positions you use most.

Guitar players are notoriously bull-headed, arrogant, and ignorant… which probably explains why they are oddly resisting the reasonable and attainable idea of getting their guitar into perfect pitch.

If there was only one thing i could show a guitar student, this would be it.

This adjustment brings together the skill of the guitar tech who did the set-up, and the skill of the guitar player to bend the note up to perfect pitch.

These 2 skill sets must come together perfectly at the same time and place. If either skill is lacking, the guitar/player will never be able to consistently make perfect notes.