Acoustic Guitar Setup: Adjust Intonation

Video Transcript

"The next thing that we're going to deal with is the intonation on this particular instrument. And we will have to use our chromatic tuner. Or you can use a strobe tuner of some kind in order to get an accurate measurement of whether or not the pitch of an open string and the pitch at the twelfth harmonic, at the octave is the same. And whether that pitch shifts when we press the string down and stretch it. So that's what intonation's all about. And the way to adjust that intonation is we may have to adjust the crown of the saddle. We might have to adjust the angle of the saddle. Or if you look on this instrument, you can see they have built in some intonation by even shifting where the crown of that saddle exists on the E string. It's on this end, and on the B string it's on this end. So it's adjusting the distance or the length of the string with saddle adjustments in order to make sure that the pitch of those three things: open string, octave harmonic and played note are all exactly the same."