I rambled on about acoustic guitar intonation a while ago and mentioned that sometimes, the proper intonation point for a particular string falls somewhere fore or aft of the actual saddle.

In some cases, all of the instrument’s other strings do likewise and this can be an indication that the saddle slot may be in the wrong place. Often, however, it’s just one outlier. One lonely string, steadfastly blazing its own out-of-tune trail. An intonation maverick, if you will.

It’s not always a big deal. Perhaps it’s just a little out or, perhaps your ear/brain isn’t particularly bothered by it. However, if you’re one of those cursed with tuning-sensitive ears or if your poor, perfectly-pitched brain screams in discordant agony when you play certain chords or intervals, you might want to consider drastic action like this.

Well, it’s not terribly drastic, really. I’ve made a new saddle for this tenor guitar from a bone blank and all strings except the third intonated quite happily. The delinquent string wanted to intonate miles away from the saddle.

So I extended the saddle.

There are a couple of options for this but the most straightforward is an additional piece of bone that’s been glued to the rest of the saddle. It’s half the height of the saddle itself—it lacks a ‘bottom’ half and it actually rests on top of the wooden bridge so it’s completely reversible (just pop a new saddle in). It gives me the additional scope needed to shift this string’s intonation point forward.

Looks odd but sounds much better.

Time to break up all this Burlesque talk with something a little different.

What’s going on here, then?

Intonation. It’s a bug-bear for some. We could talk about equal temperament concerns and mathematical subdivisions of scale-length and whatnot, but it would get dull quickly. Suffice it to say, tuning on any fretted instrument is always a little bit of a compromise.

In order to try get the damn thing to sound as closely in tune as possible, we ‘intonate’ each string to compensate its length so it sounds right when fretted. On most electric guitars, we do this by adjusting the string’s saddle—moving it backwards or forwards to slightly lengthen or shorten the string’s sounding length. Easy-peasy (unless it’s a Floyd Rose-type bridge in which case it’s more annoying than being repeatedly kicked in the shin by a crying child in a restaurant).

Acoustic guitars offer a bit more of a challenge than most electrics though.

An acoustic guitar generally has a fixed saddle (of bone or whatever). The fact that the saddle is installed at a slight angle (increasing string length from 1st to 6th) string is a nod towards some string compensation. The pre-shaped, compensated saddles that many guitars have these days is another step in the right direction.

For most people (and most guitars and strings) these get close enough that tuning issues aren’t glaringly awful.

Sometimes, and for some people (depending on playing style and the curse of having a good ear), it’s not enough.

Intonation depends on precisely seventeen million variables. Well, give or take—there are a lot of factors that all interact to determine the best setting. Tweaking setup and string choice can help if there are problems but sometimes that’s not an option or isn’t sufficient.

What’s going on in the images above is that I’ve used little chunks of rosewood to individually intonate each string on this acoustic guitar. The saddle has been removed and the rosewood is acting like an individual saddle for each string. I poke it back and forward to find where each string properly intonates.

StewMac actually offers a doohickey that does this without fiddling with bits of wood. I’ve been threatening to get one for a while but I’m forgetful and tight.

Popping a piece of cellophane over the bridge lets me mark the location of each intonation point and the actual saddle location itself. This gives me an indication of where each string should sit on the saddle to sound best. It’s easy to transfer this to a new saddle blank.

This guitar, its setup and strings, actually indicates a complication: As you can see in the image in the right, some of the optimum intonation points sit outside the actual saddle.

This happens sometimes. On an older guitar, it’s not unusual to have a saddle actually misplaced. This can necessitate filling the slot and actually re-routing it in a new position. That doesn’t tend to happen so much these days but, depending on other factors, it’s possible that one or more intonation points might be in front of, or behind, the saddle.  Of course, making a much wider saddle is an option but that adds expense and entails modifying the bridge to accommodate that wider saddle.

The other option is compromise (we’re back to that word again). In this case, carving a new saddle with intonation points as close as possible to those measured will improve things considerably. Four of six strings will be pretty much perfect and the remaining two will be a lot closer to perfect than they originally were. Overall, it sounds much more in tune than it did without the need to irreversibly modify the bridge to accommodate a wide saddle.

So, we end up with a slightly odd looking saddle that sounds a lot better and the original is safe in the case in case it’s ever needed. Not too shabby.

It’s worth remembering that this is probably overkill for the majority of people. Most guitars and guitarists are generally ok with the regular or pre-compensated saddle. Failing that, a good setup or a change of string-gauge will probably get you close enough that you’ll be happy. If you’re still hearing problems though, a custom-compensated saddle might be an option.

I’m really pleased that Haze Guitars can now offer the Buzz Feiten Tuning System.

Odds are, unless you’ve been living in a small cave in the mountains, you’ll have heard about the Buzz Feiten system and you’ll probably know something of what it can do.

Even a guitarist with the tinnest of tin-ears will know that his or her perfectly tuned guitar won’t sound completely in-tune all over the fretboard. Different positions and different chord shapes can give that unpleasant out-of-tune wobble that’s really irritating. And, if you’re heading to the studio with this going on, it can get well beyond irritating.

Intonation is the means by which we tweak the sounding length of each string to improve these tuning issues but, for some people, it doesn’t get close enough.

It wasn’t close enough for Buzz Feiten. So he did something about it. Now you can too.

Fitting the Buzz Feiten Tuning System on your guitar

The Buzz Feiten Tuning System can be retrofitted onto pretty much any electric guitar or bass. Most installations do not need to make any permanent modifications to the instrument. The existing nut is replaced with a BFTS ‘shelf’ nut which is custom cut to each particular guitar during installation and the intonation is modified based on the system’s sweetened tunings.

The result is an instrument that sounds much more in tune all over the neck and across all chord shapes. It’ll work with capos, and altered tunings too.

The only visual indication that your guitar has been modified is that the nut appears very slightly wider than normal (about 1mm or even less). That, and a tiny, serial-numbered, sticker indicating that the BFTS has been properly installed by an authorised fitter Note: you don’t have to stick this to your guitar if you don’t want but keep it in the case as confirmation in case you ever sell on the instrument. The BFTS system is tightly controlled and the sticker is sort of like your ‘certificate of authentication’.

As far as I know, Haze Guitars is the only place in Ireland that you can have the Buzz Feiten system retrofitted to your electric guitar or bass. If you’ve struggled to get your guitar sounding properly in tune, the BFTS might be just what the doctor ordered.

The BFTS is something that—I think—many people know about without completely understanding so feel free to shout out in the comments if you’ve questions about the system. Of course, you can also drop me a line if you’d like to arrange an appointment to discuss.

The string tension on your acoustic guitar depends on a few factors. String gauge, scale-length and tuning all play a part but if you assume somewhere around 200 pounds of pressure, you’ll be in the ball-park. 

If you sat there with 200lbs on your shoulders for years, odds are you might begin to buckle a bit. Your acoustic guitar holds up better than you would but that tension can take its toll. 

If you have any steel-string acoustic guitar for long enough, chances are good it’ll need a neck reset at some point in its life. That string tension alters the geometry of the instrument and the most obvious way is that the action creeps up to a point were it’s uncomfortable or awkward to play. When a reset will be needed is anyone’s guess. Different guitars are, well, different. Could be five years, could be fifty. 

Most guitars have some additional height in the saddle to allow it be lowered, taking the action down with it. This buys some time but, eventually, the same thing can happen. It’s not unusual, on older guitars, to see a saddle that’s been lowered repeatedly and is little more than a sliver, barely above the bridge. 

Might be a good time for a reset, then. 

A reasonable rule of thumb is that, the plane of the frets should be at the same height as the top of the bridge (that’s the wooden bit and not the white saddle). Putting a longish straight-edge on the frets can show you what the story is, as in the photo above. As you can see, it contacts a few millimetres below the bridge-top. Sighting down the frets from the headstock can give you a good idea visually if you don’t have a long enough ruler. 

What happens in a neck reset?

Basically, we’re trying to re-adjust the geometry of the guitar and neck so that straight-edge in the photo gets raised enough to touch or clear the bridge. That means changing the angle at which the neck joins the body.

To do this, the neck has to be removed and some wood taken off part of the heel. 

Carefully.

A neck reset on a bolt-on acoustic

Ahh, a bolt-on neck…

Dubious arguments about tone aside, if your acoustic guitar has a bolt-on neck, it does make a neck reset a little easier. The first step, you see, is getting that neck off and the easier that is for me, the cheaper it is for you. Bolt-on necks mean less hassle trying to get glue-joints to release.  

The first image clearly shows the bolts in the neck block (we’re looking inside the acoustic guitar here). Straightforward. Excellent.

The second image is the inside of the ‘top’. The image is taken with a mirror lying inside the guitar. It’s always a good idea to get an idea what’s going on in here before starting major surgery, especially as bolt-on necked guitars from different manufacturers vary in how the handle things in this area. That block of wood glued to the extension and shoulder-brace, for instance, is worth some consideration. 

A little work to get that block to disengage and some work on the fingerboard extension is all that’s needed here. You can see the way neck and body fit together relatively clearly above. 

Something I wasn’t expecting was to encounter an epoxy-like material in the body mortice around the neck tenon. It was in the area around that white tape (marked with an X in the photo on the left). Because it wouldn’t adhere well to this tape, I’m guessing its job was simply to act as a sort of gap-filler to ensure help ensure a solid connection here. Whatever, I noted it for reassembly and cleaned up the residue. 

Incidentally, I noticed a hairline crack in the heel between the two sockets for the bolts. It was pretty small and probably unlikely to cause problems but I made it good before proceeding to work the wood in this area.

The reset itself is done by removing a ‘wedge’ shape of wood from the heel—more at the bottom, graduating to none at the top where it meets the fingerboard. Calculating the amount to remove can be done by a relatively simple formula but I tend to do that only to get in the ball-park and then finish by eye. 

The tape in the left photo gives me a line indicating the wood to be removed. There are a few ways to go about this but I like to bevel down to this line and then bring the sides to meet it. 

Like this. Wood is carefully removed from the sides of the heel now. Very carefully. It would be very easy to mess this up. I don’t want to remove any wood from that far end where the heel intersects the fingerboard. Doing that would actually move the neck closer to the bridge and muck up the intonation. What we want to do is to take out that wedge shape I mentioned earlier. When that’s gone, the neck joins the body at a slightly increased angle and this means better action.

Most of the work is done as shown in the left photo. When the bulk is gone, I’ll test fit to the body and I’ll remove the remainder of wood using sandpaper between body and neck as in the right image. This helps perfectly shape the heel-fit to the body. 

It’s important to check alignment often. As well as the set angle, I’m checking for side-to-side alignment to make sure I don’t take too much off one side of the heel. That would point the neck too much to one side or the other—not good. 

Once I’m happy with the fit and alignment, it’s time to reassemble. In this case, thanks to the construction of this guitar, it’s an easy job. Bolted back on and a little glue in the appropriate places—especially on that little block of wood we found earlier on the end of the neck—and we’re good to go.

And this is what we’re looking for. The straight-edge along the frets just skims the top of the bridge. I’ll need to make a new saddle to replace this one that’s now far too low but that’s no problem. We don’t need to do any fretwork on this guitar as a consequence of the neck reset (frequently that’s not the case) so, all in all, it’s been a good day. 

I’ll try to pull together some photos of a more involved neck reset soon. Anything with a glue-in, dovetail neck involves messy work, steaming out the neck.

For now, though, I’ve strung up this baby and it’s sounding (and more importantly), playing great. 

I suspect this deserves a celebratory tea.

Gibson does things Gibson’s way.

Whether it makes sense or not.

Anybody who works with guitars could, most likely, give you a list of ‘quirks’ that help keep Gibson’s guitars traditional. For ‘traditional’, you can sometimes read, “stuff that doesn’t make sense but it’s the way we’ve done it for decades so we’d be mental to change”.

The saddles on the usual Les Paul bridge—the Gibson Tun-O-Matic—are individually adjustable so that each string can be tweaked to help intonate the guitar (to allow it play mostly in tune over the length of the neck). The bridge is installed at an angle to provide some extra backwards travel to get things where they need to be.

All seemingly reasonable.

There are two type of bridge generally fitted to Les Pauls (and most Gibson electrics): The ABR-1 and the Nashville. The ABR is the original and, if you’ve ever paid it any attention, you’ll probably have seen that it has the three bass-side saddles installed backwards (that is, with the sloped/angled side towards the pickups)*. If you think about it, this isn’t the best way to have a string contact a bridge—ideally, you want a clean, definite take-off point like you’d get with a straight edge, as on the treble strings.

So, why this craziness?

Basically, it’s to make up for the fact that there is insufficient travel on the ABR bridge to properly add the compensation the wound strings need. Flipping the saddles allows a little bit more compensation before the saddle can’t go any farther.

Now, to be fair, Gibson tried to address this issue (and others) with the ABR when they developed the Nashville Tune-O-Matic. And, just like when Gibson change anything, many people think that the original was best. Of course, I have an opinion on this but it’s not really the point here, so I won’t go into it. Suffice it to say, the Nashville bridge has a bit more travel for its saddles and so, it usually intonates reasonably well.

Sometimes though, it doesn’t.

Sometimes, you need to do the ABR trick and flip a saddle. Good intonation takes precedent over any drawbacks associated with the backward saddles.

Not all Nashvilles are created equal when it comes to doing this. It tends to be easy on a Gibson bridge (just back the screw out until it disengages) but some aftermarket bridges are a bit more hassle.

Incidentally, the ABR-style bridge (with the already-reversed saddles) sometimes requires one or more saddle-flips too. A lot depends on factors like string-gauge and even whether the bridge has been installed slightly out of place (it happens). Saddle-flipping on an ABR-1 is really simple—pop out the retainer wire and lift out the saddle. Easy-peasy.

Perhaps I can make this the first in a series of Things That Are A Bit Mental About Gibson Guitars.

*Incidentally, occasionally, more or less than three saddles is reversed. It depends on how the particular guitar intonates.