Okay, so here’s a weird one. My student’s electric guitar is a 3/4 Squier Strat copy. It has been neglected off and on over the last 3 - 4 years as he alternates between preferring an acoustic, a classical and an electric. So he’s blowing the dust off it and playing it again, but the first string is way out of intonation. Fair enough, I take a look at it. The 12th fret harmonic is almost over the 13th fret!! I shorten the string length by about 2mm, but no, it needs to be shortened by the full distance from the 12th to the 13th fret, and there’s not enough screw to the bridge piece to hold that.
I can’t find any of my guitar tech books, either - it’s about time to replace them as they were all about 40 years old anyway. I think they got put in the wrong box and got sent to a friend’s church book sale, along with most of the CanLit collection.
Am I just so exhausted from overwork that I’ve forgotten everything I ever knew about a guitar’s setup? I’m baffled. It isn’t a warp or a bow in the neck, the other strings (which do have their 12th fret harmonics over the 12th fret) are in good intonation, I don’t think even a crap string could have its harmonic anywhere but the halfway point - what the Hell is going on?
Are you sure the string isn’t catching someplace, so it is effectively being fretted, changing the location of the harmonic? Stupid, but worth asking. Is the pitch difference between open and 1st fret truly a semi-tone? Are you sure the string is exiting the bridge correctly, and ends right where it crests over the saddle?
Catching - no. I went up the neck chromatically on the first string - each fret plays a note which is unimpeded by the frets above it.
The pitch difference between open and 1st fret is not a true semitone, it’s a little flat. By the time you’re up to the 7th fret, it’s nastily flat. I didn’t have my tuner with me, but I suspect that each fret represents ~1/13th of an octave. The G6 chord at the 12th fret sounds like a G+ with a D natural in the bass.
That last is worth checking (I don’t have the guitar here with me; all suggestions will have to wait until our next lesson for me to try out.) If the bridge saddle were too low and not catching the string at all, that might account for the extra length (though it’s strung in the standard Strat fashion, through the body, so I can’t imagine what would be catching it to the right of the bridge.)
I was hoping someone would just tell me ‘you’re turning it the wrong way, dummy’, but I’m quite convinced that if the harmonic is over the 13th fret, the string must be too long. Right?
FWIW, I had an issue with my Tele a while back where I couldn’t intonate the low E. The guitar was fine and intonated, then one day I noticed that that one string had changed and I couldn’t adjust the bridge enough to get that intonation back in shape. A workaround (which was suggested here in this thread) was to remove the string behind that string’s bridge saddle, which gave me enough travel to get the string intonated. My Tele’s bridge is a Strat-style one with individual saddles, so I’d bet you could remove the spring on your student’s guitar and maybe get enough travel. Maybe. I ended up taking my guitar to get professionally set up, and somehow via neck relief or something they managed to eke out a little more adjustment room and it seems to be in fine shape now.
Hmm, one other thought, since this is a Strat style guitar, is that the springs on the whammy changed somehow, which could lift or lower the bridge and make all the strings slightly shorter/longer. Look at the bridge and see if it’s lifted up too far or perhaps too little, then try adjusting the springs attached to the bridge block to change that tilt. Or just block the whammy if the student doesn’t care about whammy-ing.
On this POS Squier Strat, a new first string did most of the trick; it still needed intonation work, but the harmonic was at least within shouting distance of the 12th fret. Said student got a used MIM Strat that had been on sale for $200. for Christmas, so this Squier is now his tinkering guitar - I bought him a copy of Dan Erlewine’s ‘Guitar Repair’, and now he has a beater to work on. Any other recommendations for guitar tech books welcomed…
Along similar lines, what do the rest of you do to eliminate 60 cycle hum from an amp? Has anyone ever got so extreme as to put a gate between the head and the cabinet?
Definitely have him get on line and search youtube and the web in general for “how to set up your Strat” - given the moving parts of the tremolo assembly, there is an extra level of voodoo in how folks set them up, so this gets a lot of air time on line. Fwiw, I would challenge him - if he is trying to educate himself about proper guitar set up and tweaking things like the intonation - by starting off withe the tremolo assembly Blocked - i.e., do what Clapton does and an insert a wedge of wood or something between the Trem Block which goes through the body, and the body itself. This effectively blocks the trem and leaves the Strat more like a normal, non-moving bridge assembly-type guitar. Much easier starting point - now, can he get the intonation in line with a blocked trem? Focus on that as a first lesson. If he gets that, then he can move on to unblocking the trem and seeing how things go…my $.02. (have him google “blocking a strat trem or whammy” to see how - super easy once you know)
Eliminating hum - dude, I have old Soapbar P-90’s on my Black Beauty Les Paul, so yeah, I know about hum!! ;). Yes, I use a noise gate, but no, it doesn’t go between the head and the cab. The latest approach is offered by a few makers - I went with a Boss NS-2 because the local Guitar Center had it. Basically “noise suppressors” are next-gen noise gates: you use them to set up an “effects loop” within the signal chain between your guitar and amp. All of your other pedals are plugged into a loop that both emerges from and re-enters into that NS-2, giving you control over all the noise generated by both your guitar pickups AND any boxes you have in your chain (which can really make 60 cycle sound even worse). Of course, if you don’t have other boxes, you plug the guitar into the NS-2 and then into your amp and it acts like a simple noise gate. Either way, I find it does a good job reducing hum when I am not playing.
Now, an old-timer would tell you that you just need to get in the habit of rolling the Volume off your guitar in between songs - that’s the way we did it back in the day and once you get used to it, is actually no big deal…
I’m surprised a surge suppressor would help hum unless the local power is really messed up.
BTW, did you know you can buy a Vintage 180 watt Blues Junior? This guy thinks you can. Asshole. I’m digging through the craigslist faq, and it seems there isn’t a mechanism to delist a dishonest ad, darnit. I considered shaming the guy directly, but I’m not sure I want him to have my e-mail address.
Well, he’s a twit for looking to charge $500 and calling the amp “vintage” for sure - I am sure he just has a typo for “180 watts” when the amp is really 18 watts. There are earlier versions of the BJr from a few years back, but attempting to frame them as vintage or more valuable at this point is a bit…premature
As for the surge protector - yeah, no clue. I use one to avoid frying my amp if a surge occurs, and do find that in some situations, there appears to be a bit less hum from my P-90’s but couldn’t tell you why…
I should point out that I was using a $60 surge protector that was left over from some other project that was specifically designed for (blah blah blah AV crap) but my boss canceled the project so I wound up borrowing it one day because I needed the space on the jack and whadda know, it worked.
To my buddy E and everyone here, I just wanted to wish y’all a rockin’, pickin’ and grinnin’
New Year! We got some friends coming over tonight who are gonna rock this place to the ground (with me on bass and drums - but not simultaneously!)
Actually, it’s stupider than that. A Blues Junior is 15 watts output power, but the plate on the back stating the input power reads 180 watts. So I’m guessing this guy knows little about amps and got his figure from reading the back of the amp. So if not for that “vintage” comment, I’d downgrade this guy from “asshole” to “dolt”.
So FYI, Santa did bless me with one of those Xaviere acoustics, the cutaway one with the spruce top. $160ish bucks. And I liked it quite a lot at first. Decent looking, sounded quite nice. The action wasn’t all I dreamed of, but I could get around the fretboard nimbly enough.
I had quite a lot of fun for a couple of weeks, but then things began to change. I found a buzzy fret that I swore hadn’t been there before. Crap, I’ll have to maybe learn how to level some frets, that seems doable. Then I found another buzzy fret that definitely hadn’t been there before. After another week or so, I was getting duplicate notes on several frets. I sent it back this morning with the high E having duplicate notes on frets 9 & 10, and frets 12 through 15. Plus some buzz frets elsewhere.
Amazing that an instrument can change so drastically in such a short time.
I guess I’ll try a cheap Yamaha or somesuch next. From a local retailer. Which sadly means GC, but they’ve got a solid return policy.
Not sure I like the sound of that - what exactly are you trying to say Claude? You think we’re clueless twits? Gosh thanks; what do you think you know better?
