Aargh, I feel like this thread is a showcase for my stupidity.

Sorry folks. Will dig up a pedal tuner....

Is the neck loose? There's zero reason lowering the PU should make the guitar go sharp.

None of this is anything to feel dumb about. I've fucked up my equipment in a variety of ways over the years, not that this is even something you did, necessarily!

Here's a funny story. It's about someone you have heard of who plays guitar.

His band is great. They were playing with one of my bands. He was breaking strings and having to tune constantly, and it was really putting a damper on things.

Our guitar player loved this band, and he could not stand to watch. So he went to the guy after the first gig on this little tour, and said hey LET ME GET YOUR GUITAR FIXED I'LL PAY FOR IT. The guy was like oh hmmmm I don't know but eventually he got bullied/shamed into giving it up.

Our guy took the guitar to our repair guy. It was insanely messed up. The frets were fucked and the neck was really loose in the neck pocket and the intonation was hosed. Little burrs on the saddles, shitty nut. So the repair guy set it all up, and a couple hundred bucks later our guy walked out with it.

The next day, we had another show just out of town. The guy in the other band started playing his guitar at the check and got this really puzzled look on his face. Checked his tuning. Played a few songs. Checked it again. The entire night he kept looking out at our guy, like "how did you DO that?"

hah! I remember that story from the old forum. BTS. (not the boy band..)

Confession: I played guitar for over 15 years before getting a proper setup..

penningtron wrote: Wed Feb 15, 2023 2:46 pm hah! I remember that story from the old forum. BTS. (not the boy band..)

Confession: I played guitar for over 15 years before getting a proper setup..

I've never had one but I've learned to get it close on my own. I need to have a bunch of fret wire replaced on my Jazzmaster and the idea of the process makes me nervous

Reading with interest...

I think it's important to differentiate between the age-old problems of a guitar not sounding in tune and one that actually doesn't play in tune (or as 'in tune' as a guitar can play).

There's other threads about equal temperament and how the design of a guitar leads to it inevitably never being perfectly in tune. I think that's what's being referred to with a few comments about guitars having squiffy sounding G and B strings. This is because it's the G and B that usually give you the major/minor 3rd of a chord (in the cowboy chord positions) and it's that 3rd note in the scale that's most noticeably 'out' on a guitar. Other threads cover it better but essentially - you think of the component notes of chords by their musical name. For example: an F major bar chord is (low to high) F - C (the 5th of F) - F - A (the major 3rd of F) - C (the 5th again) - F.
In actual fact, the intervals aren't *exactly* the notes of C and A, it's just we call them that for convenience. The major 3rd of F isn't *exactly* an A, it's actually a fair few % flatter. A lot of people mistake that for intonation problems when it's really just the human ear not liking the sound of how the guitar solves the problem of needing to be a multi-key instrument. If you get me?
This seems really prevalent in Gibson-type guitars that rely on hotter pickups and longer sustain as you really seem to hear it for some reason - the G and B really jump out as wrong in first position chords on a Les Paul every time I play one and it's why so many notable LP players find workarounds (i.e. playing a first position A chord without the 3rd note in it by fretting the B and E on the 5th fret with their pinky).

Anyway - I think a few of the things mentioned here fall under this issue.

But - I'm not sure the Jazzmaster does. If the tech and andyman are both right in saying it intonates fine at the 12th fret then something really weird is going on.

Some of the following have been suggested but I'd be looking at:

Has the neck angle been changed? Is there a shim in the neck pocket that's somehow making the neck ever so slightly rotated away from being perfectly seated to the body, either that's not parallel to the bridge or that it's somehow raised up more on one side than the other? A lot of Fender offsets have shims to lower the action (some from the factory), I'm wondering if this has one and it's sitting diagonally in the neck pocket meaning one side of the neck gets progressively more out-of-tune the further from the pocket you go? Does that make sense?

Also, is something weird happening with the tremolo? Is the trem somehow slightly engaging when you play? I say this because a trem would begin to engage the thinner strings more easily than the thicker ones if it was very lightly being pressed somehow. I can't see how this would happen, or why it wouldn't also effect those higher strings further up the neck but - like the shim possibility - maybe there's something about the physical action of fretting and playing on those first few frets that is knocking those strings out, even just slightly?

Failing that it has to be the nut or the way the frets are crowned. If nothing is physically changing the pitch of the strings to mess with tuning then it has to be that the scale length is wrong which means something is moving the fret positions away from where it would sound correct. Assuming the frets are seated in the right places and the bridge is in the right place (which 12th fret intonation indicates is so) then something is messing with how the strings line up. Obvious culprit is the nut - if the slots are filed on too much of a slope it could add or subtract a few mm from the intended scale length and would be most audible the closer to the nut you are fretting. Fret crowning could also be an issue but I'd be surprised if you could hear it enough to be such a problem but if the peak of each fret isn't in the centre then when you fret a string it will be shortening the string length either too much or not enough to be 'right'.

I'd have also said strings could play a part, a slightly indented string (through lots of use) won't fret quite right and sometimes miss a fret completely but you've said changing them made no difference.

Rambling, too much coffee, but I'd be interested to take a look if the guitar were anywhere near me.

andyman wrote: Aargh, I feel like this thread is a showcase for my stupidity.

Sorry folks. Will dig up a pedal tuner....

Please do not fret (ha), I'm learning tons. Great thread.

honeyisfunny wrote: Thu Feb 16, 2023 6:10 am A lot of Fender offsets have shims to lower the action (some from the factory), I'm wondering if this has one and it's sitting diagonally in the neck pocket meaning one side of the neck gets progressively more out-of-tune the further from the pocket you go? Does that make sense?

I had this exact diagonal shim thing on my used Squier JM. I took it out right after I got it, put in a Mastery, and was able to set up fine without the weird shim. Also, yes, you're not doing yourself any favors trying to chase down fine turning/intonation problems with a clip on tune/phone tuner. I use a clip on Snark "super tight" as a starting point when I'm setting up something I've built, but that's just to get in the ballpark and is followed by weeks of small adjustments after I play the thing over and over and see how it breaks in. During that, I'm still just going by ear and with a TU-2, but as I said earlier my ears aren't the most discerning. You'll likely want something more accurate.

Tom Wanderer wrote: Thu Feb 16, 2023 9:29 am During that, I'm still just going by ear and with a TU-2, but as I said earlier my ears aren't the most discerning. You'll likely want something more accurate.

Since I mentioned it earlier ("you'll want anything more accurate than a TU-2"), it's worth noting that the Boss TU-2 is only accurate +/- 3 cents, which is perceivable to the human ear. It increased to +/- 1 cent with the TU-3, but something like a Pitch Black or Polytune is accurate +/- 0.1 cent in strobe mode.

If you're a plug-your-guitar-into-your-computer type of person, I'm a huge fan of this: https://tomasboril.cz/tuner/

tommy wrote: Thu Feb 16, 2023 10:08 am

Tom Wanderer wrote: Thu Feb 16, 2023 9:29 am During that, I'm still just going by ear and with a TU-2, but as I said earlier my ears aren't the most discerning. You'll likely want something more accurate.

Since I mentioned it earlier ("you'll want anything more accurate than a TU-2"), it's worth noting that the Boss TU-2 is only accurate +/- 3 cents, which is perceivable to the human ear. It increased to +/- 1 cent with the TU-3, but something like a Pitch Black or Polytune is accurate +/- 0.1 cent in strobe mode.

Yes, I wasn't very clear. I meant that those things work as a good starting point (for me), but that Andyman will likely want something more accurate than what I use. Especially given this particular situation. That a TU-2 will probably be better than a clip-on for quick checking, but it will be necessary to get even more precise for fine tuning the intonation.