Guitar Intonation.

Have you tune your guitar using clip-on tuner and it's perfectly in tune for all open strings, but it getting horribly out of tune at high fret. Yup, that's intonation problem striking at you.

What's guitar intonation? Well, on traditional style guitar, with straight frets, the fret placement is based on a string or based on 'standard'  measurement. The problem with this placement is while it's fine with 1st string, it doesn't sound right with 2nd string (b) or 3rd (G). Of course it's like Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, if we make it work on G-string, it will sound wrong on high-e string.

Can it be solved? Some people using 'true temperament' system on their fretboard. The fret in this system is not straight but have a certain shape in order to get the strings perfectly in tune. Of course different string gauge will need different fret shape so one guitar will stuck on one type of string. (We might use another string, but it will out of tune, maybe worse than standard straight frets).

Okay, it's not generally practical. Is there another way?




On some electric guitar, we could set the position of string on the bridge saddle. Floyd Rose have this system. Maybe the most well known is tune o matic system on some Gibson Guitar (like Les Paul model).

With this system, we still have a straight fret but the length of strings from nut to bridge saddle is different for each string. This way, the intonation problem is 'slightly' solved.

Slightly? Yup, we still have G and low E string out of tune in some place. We could solved it by add some material on the nut so it looks like moving forward on G and low E strings.

Keep in mind that perfectly tuned guitar with straight frets is (maybe) impossible, we just have to getting closer to it, :)