Intonation set, but its out of tune up the board.

hi, I have just finished my first build, a TLA-1.
I am not new to guitars and have set intonation before on other guitars that I own.
I have set the intonation so every string is in tune and an octave at the 12 fret.
The nut height is 20 thou at the first fret on all strings.
The neck has a small amount of bow, and there is no buzz anywhere on the fret board.
now my problem is this.... if I hold down the low e string on the 3 fret for a g note... on the tuner its g#????
I have this problem on all strings, the further I move up the board the more in tune I gets. and when I hit the 12th fret its spot on.
whats is going on???
please help guitar gurus
thanks
Derek

Hi Derek,
please post distances nut to 12th fret and 12th fret to both E string saddles.
Also please post a photo of the build may give us some clues. The bridge pup routes on these kits are too far south and sometimes the saddles are too far from the 12th fret which I suspect is the problem

Hi I will post distances in the morning.
I did measure when I first did the mock up. And I have routed out 5mm north to move the bridge pup to get equal distance.
I'm reading a lot about nut height, but I don't think I can go any lower.
Cheers
Derek

Hi Derek, it could be that your nut is still a bit high.

Fret a string on the 3rd fret and the string should just have a smidge (technical term) of clearance above the 1st fret.

rob

Ok I have measured the distance from the nut to the 12 and from the 12 to the bridge. It's 322mm on both give or take 1mm. I'll check the nut height again.
I have really enjoyed putting this guitar together and love the look of it... Dam I want it to work!!!!
Thanks for the advice, please keep it coming.
Cheers
Derek

Wot Robin sed. :)

by what Derek is saying his nut height is quite low. Sounds like the bridge saddles are too close to the nut, nut to 12th fret should be around 323mm so 12th fret to low E string should be around 327-329mm. High E string should be around 323-325mm from 12th fret.
The nut height may be contributing to the bad intonation

Sometimes if the pickups are set too close to the strings, that can affect string intonation as well, but the magnetic fields of the pickup's pole pieces will exert a pull on the strings and make them read a bit flat, one other thing that can affect string intonation is the neck alignment with respect to the centre-line of the body, also, the straightness of the neck, if the neck is a bit twisted then the string intonation will be out in some parts of the neck too.


But definitely, if the string saddles are in the wrong place to begin with then the individual string intonation is going to be difficult to get it set correctly, I had first-hand experience of that when I tried to install a Floyd Rose Trem on my Gold Strat, I mistakenly positioned the bridge so that the saddles were positioned about 5mm further from the 12th fret than they should have been, this meant that the length of the string from the 12th fret was too long and consequently the 12th fret intonation of the strings was too flat, and all the string saddles had already been moved as far forward towards the 12th fret as they could go, but each string still read flat by at least 50 cents ( from memory).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by robin

Hi Derek, it could be that your nut is still a bit high.

Fret a string on the 3rd fret and the string should just have a smidge (technical term) of clearance above the 1st fret.

rob

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Out of idle curiosity, and the fact I am procrastinating from a work job I don't really want to get stuck into:

If the above mentioned smidge could be measured, what distance should there be twixt fret and the bottom of the string?

Basically as low as you can get it without the string buzzing. This can depend on several factors; the amount of bow in the neck, the overall action height and the evenness of the fret heights. StewMac will give you some guidelines, but you can often get it lower than the guidelines. The high E will have the smallest gap, the bottom E the biggest, but none of the gaps is going to be more than a few thousandths of an inch - maybe 0.003" for the top E and 0.006" for the bottom E.