FOR MUSICIANS ONLY Saving a Misunderstood Guitar by George Ziemann -- March 27, 2008 About 10 years ago, I bought a Les Paul. Got it on eBay from a pawn shop in Reno. The damn thing has never played properly, never stayed in tune. I've shown it to all my guitar-playing friends, some of which have taken it and spent time working on it, with no improvement. Last week, I changed strings and, armed with just the tiniest bit of information, that crappy lemon of a guitar turned back into a real Les Paul again. For the first time since I bought it, I'm not ashamed to play it. I'm a keyboardist and sound tech first, but I like to play rhythm guitar now and then. Picking up a guitar to write a song also produces different results than sitting down at a piano for the same purpose. So I've had a guitar of some sort lying around most of the time. Some of them were sweet. A few of them were like the Les Paul. No matter what you did, it always sounded out of tune. Some people have said to me that the intonation was "bad" or "off". While I fully agreed, I thought that an instrument's intonation was a trait related to the design of an instrument -- part of the consideration when choosing between a solid body guitar and a hollow body; an upright piano vs. a baby grand, vs an 8-foot Steinway; plexiglass vs wood drums. I considered intonation to be related to resonant frequencies. Bad intonation was a manufacturing defect, as far as I knew. It means something totally different in terms of a guitar. Like I said, a few guitarists took it, screwed around with it and gave it back, sounding no better. Some of them had advice, almost always a recommendation to take it to their favorite guitar guy, who will "set up the action" or simply "set it up for you." This service seemed to always come with a $75-$100. According to the serial number of the guitar, it's a 1959, which should be worth a small fortune. However, it's white and they didn't make white Les Pauls in 1959. This thing also had string locks installed and a Steinberger bridge to enable the whammy bar thing, which the previous owner had apparently used so much that an internal metal post was bent. And then there's this tuning problem. I thought the guitar was a lost cause and just couldn't see spending more money on it. Last week, I auditioned for a band. They were looking for a keyboardist/guitarist. I warned them ahead of time that my guitar was a wanker. They said to bring it anyway. I let them tune it. Picked it up and played an E chord in the middle of the neck. Serious wankage. The guitarist says, "You need to set the intonation." For some reason, I don't believe anyone had ever used that specific set of words. I had never suspected that intonation was something which could be altered. This is that $50 to $75 set-up thing guitarists pay people to do for them. I figure that maybe I can look it up, get an idea of the basic principle and consider whether it could possibly help this particular guitar enough to justify the expense. What I learned was that intonation is probably the most important thing to know about an electric guitar. Otherwise, you'll be paying $75 a pop to have someone change your strings. Understanding Guitar Intonation "Bad intonation" means that the guitar's tuning does not remain consistent from the top of the neck to the bottom. Even if the open chords (like A and E, played at the top of the neck) are in perfect tune, after the 5th or 6th fret, it just ain't right. "Setting the action" -- My understanding is that this is the adjustment of how far the strings are from the surface of the neck. If the "action" is bad, the strings buzz (one extreme) or are too far away from the neck (the other). That's the context in which I've heard it used, and I know how to make that adjustment. That's not intonation. "Setting the intonation" corrects the tuning problems. This is going to piss off a lot of guitar techs, but unless there's a lot more to it that I'm missing, it's not exactly rocket science and $75 seems like an awful lot to charge. Every guitar player should not only know how to do this, but should do it every time they change strings, for reasons which shall become readily apparent. I set up the Les Paul correctly the first time I tried. It's been in tune for a week now, all the way down the neck. Setting the Intonation First, do everything you usually do when you change your strings. Clean the grime from around the frets, maybe a little linseed oil, polish the guitar surface and the back of the neck, get the string height where you want it, whatever your ritual is. Plug it in to your tuner and tune the open strings. Here's the $75 part. We'll start with the low E string. With the guitar still plugged into the tuner, play the string at the 12th fret (one octave, usually the double dots on the neck). Does the tuner still read an E? If not, you want to take the bridge saddle (see orange arrow in photo) for that string and move it slightly until the open string and the 12th fret both are registering as the same note on the tuner. If the 12th fret was flat, move the saddle away from the neck. If it's sharp, move it toward the neck. Do that for every string. Go back over it again just to make sure. Your intonation is now set. That's all there is to it. The more precise your tuner is, the better results you'll get but I used a cheap battery-powered tuner and it worked beautifully. How It Went Bad After I got over the amazement of the improvement this made to the guitar, it was pretty obvious why it was never right before. It was also obvious that paying someone to do this would have been a waste of money in the long run, especially for my particular guitar. To put it simply, when I change the strings, the bridge saddles move, even if I'm careful. If I'm not, they all fall out. There's a set screw to keep them all in place, but sometimes they fall out anyway. Without understanding the intonation and how to set it, the chances of putting them back in the right place are slim at best. If you've got a wanker guitar, I'd almost bet that your problem is similar. This is the only thing that was ever really wrong with the guitar. After 10 years of considering it not playable, I had considered trying to sell it off at a loss to a buy a better guitar. It took about 10 minutes to fix it. No extra tools, no expensive testing equipment. Didn't have to take it anywhere. All I needed was a teeny clue. After the fact, I wonder how I made it this far without learning this. I've played guitars that seemed to always stay in tune. Never knew what the difference was before. Now that I do, and seeing as how correcting this seems a simple, natural extension of changing strings and tuning the guitar (just one extra step), I'm now wondering about everyone who looked at my guitar in the past, especially the ones that spent some time on it. I'll change their strings for $30.

FOR MUSICIANS ONLY... "For Musicians Only" is a new category of articles written for the musicians out there in Readerville.