How To Adjust Intonation On An Electric Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Tim Ambrosius. I'm a professional guitar technician. I'm going to show you how to adjust the intonation on your electric guitar. What you need to do is, tune up your string. We're doing on the low "e" string here. Hit your twelfth fret harmonic. Make sure that it's in tune. Then, what you're going to need to do is compare your twelfth fret harmonic to your twelfth fret fretted note. So, it was on "e", and we see that when you fret the note that it's a little flat. Now, what that means is that the string is too long, and that you need to shorten the string. So, what we do is loosen up the string a little bit. Just take a screwdriver and adjust the saddle on that individual string. Now, we're going to be moving the saddle shorter because the string is too long because the twelfth note fret is flat to the twelfth fret harmonic. So, we'll give it a couple of turns. It's gonna be, you're not really gonna note, I mean you're gonna see it move but, it's not gonna be that big of a move. That's exactly what you're dealing with is you want to get that precise. So, you tune your string back up. Back up to "e". Then, once again, hit your twelfth fret harmonic. Tune that up as dead on as you can. Then, pull your twelfth fret, and you'll see we're just a little bit flat. So, once again, we'll have to loosen the string. Then, shorten the string again. In other words, bring the saddle up a little bit further. Tune your string back up. Check the twelfth fret harmonic. Okay. Then check it against the twelfth fret again. There you are. You're in tune. It's on "e" and so is your twelfth fret harmonic. And your intonation is set. "