Intonation

[chuckster722]

Anyone having trouble with intonation on S-500?

[officerNordberg]

A little, but it was my first floating trem setup, lots more variables than a hardtail. Granted I found the stock G&L instructions awesomely succinct and easy to follow. As for the intonation if you're not a pro guitar tech already I'd recommend picking up the following book from your local library: Guitar Player Repair Guide. This book finally put intonation troubles in perspective for me. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, though it may not show in my crappy playing, but little problems with intonation drive me nuts. Thankfully this book helped me calm down about these things, pointing out there is no perfect intonation given the way guitars are setup with fixed width frets and the varied construction across the six strings. This may not help you with your problem but it helped me realize, that given all that's at play I wasn't going to get it any better than I had (which was actually pretty darn good) especially given that I don't set up guitars for a living.

For more immediate help, I think my problem was my intonation was too sharp and I was running out of travel in my saddles. If I recall correctly from the book this could have been due to a high action. High action means more string tension needed to fret the note at the 12th fret resulting in the note being sharp. Not sure though...

HTH

[chuckster722]

Thanks,
I have a Tele that has a hard tail. My intonation, for some reason, is always locked in perfect. I love the way the S-500 plays. The action is fine on it. It seems that the G and Low E are always out a little. It is more noticble at the 5th fret. The A chord always seems to be out of tune. It drives me nuts. I was hoping with locking tuners, this would stay in tune and intonation better. I will try the repair guide you suggested and see if it works.