Intonation

[thomasteven]

Alright, both my guitars have the bridge saddles set up perfectly so that the intonation is right at the 12th fret, but they sound like utter crap when playing frets 17-24 and 1-6 (not exact, but around there).

Does anyone know any possible problems that could lead the intonation to be off at certain frets. I'm thinking that my frets may need to be leveled off or something along those lines. But I'm not entirely sure. Anyone with any ideas is welcome.

Steve

[Southpa]

There is a little more fine tuning involved when intonating a guitar. You can't expect perfect intonation with ALL string saddles exactly the same distance from the 12th fret. Some compensation has to be made to accomodate the varying string thicknesses, bridge height and angle. You haven't mentioned what kind of guitars you are trying to intonate so here is the recipe for pretty much all strat style guitars:

http://www.mrgearhead.net/faq/stratsetup.html

And if you feel like doing some reading this site pretty much covers everything:

http://www.braille.uwo.ca/ag/articles/setup-101-1.html

[32251]

If your saddles are correct and the frets have a good crown on them and your strings are good then all you need to do is tune the E A D B E straight up on your tuner and temper the G string a little flat, working with it until a C chord and an E chord sound decent to you.

Remember that the guitar is a tempered instrument and does not play perfectly in tune, only close. There are other factors that will cause intonation problems, flat frets, defective strings, bridge saddles improperly adjusted, ecessive finger pressure etc. Make sure you have all that taken care of.