Kaizen 6 Intonation

[thawk819]

Hey my fellow Kaizen owners. I'm having a beast of a time intonating my Kaizen 6. I ended up not needing to make any truss adjustments; I got used to the really flat, minimal relief feel, and find myself really liking it. However, I notice that if the open strings are tuned to pitch, the 12th fret notes (and pretty much every other note along the neck) are a little flat. I broke out the trusty 2mm allen wrench and it barely takes a quarter to half, clockwise turn to get the 12th fret notes right on pitch, but then the open string notes are a little sharp. So up to the Steinbergers to tune down slightly, and with the open strings back in tune, all the fretted notes are a little flat again.

After a few minutes of this back and forth I figure I must be missing something. I've never had this much trouble getting a guitar to intonate. Did any of you experience this and if so, how did you fix it?

 

[Musikron]

Isn't there an issue with the nut placement on these?

 

[thawk819]

Isn't there an issue with the nut placement on these?

Google searching that seems to yield mixed results and some heated forum debates, and nothing official from EBMM. This is the only place I know there are some actual owners who have given me solid advice. I’m hoping there’s just something I’m missing about intonating a multi scale guitar.

 

[Norrin Radd]

Have you changed the gauge of string with which it shipped?

 

[DrKev]

Issue with the nut placement? That's a surprise to me (my absence on other forums notwithstanding), I think I'd remember if someone piped up about it. I'll reach out to CS and see what they have to say for us. (Note that with the compensated nut, nut placement is NOT the same as the theoretical zero fret position. Same is true of PRS and I think Takamine, who also build in some compensation by shifting a standard nut a little forward towards the 1st fret).

I've intonated literally thousands of guitars. With an accurate enough tuner we realize that no guitar ever intonates or plays in tune at every fret. Like everything on a guitar, everything is a compromise all the time. String height at the nut causes problems (which is why open strings are a poor choice of reference but nobody *ever* talks about that). Finger angle, lateral position, and pressure when fretting will change things, and can never flatten a note, only sharpen, so how do we deal with that? And what about how hard we pick/pluck? Do we tune and intonate to the note attack (which is loudest but sharp) or when the note settles down? String pull from some pickups can make things worse. Even then, I tune my lowest string 1 cent flat all the time on all my guitars. How should I intonate that string?

The good news is that intonation has to be seriously off to be a problem so don't sweat it. Remember, of all recorded modern music in the last 70 years, much of it used instruments with worn strings, tuned by ear, and not accurately intonated, and that's before we remember how many guitars didn't have individual string compensation and how much alcohol and drugs were involved in the recordings. Don't get me started on mandolins and ukuleles where the scale length is so short the crown of the fret can affect intonation. So, we just do our best and then forget about it, safe in the knowledge that we're better set up than many of the recordings we love, and get on with the job of playing.

My approach to intonation is this: We usually don't play open strings as much as fretted notes (most of us metal/rock/blues types don't, right?) so we really want the fretted notes intonated reasonably well relative to each other. So I'll ignore the open strings and instead compare the 3rd fretted note to the 15th fretted note (or any two notes 12 frets apart). If the open strings bother me, sometimes I'll intonate again with the open strings and maybe settle somewhere in between. The lowest strings, by virtue of thickness and low tension, can be weird (especially with single coil pickups) and sometimes won't intonate at all, so I'll intonate the highest strings first and eyeball the saddle position of the lowest ones.

Remember, "Perfect is enemy of done".

 

[thawk819]

Thanks all, some updates:

I didn't change the strings (left everything stock actually), but, after reading the above I decided to be more patient and went back to making adjustments.

1. I added a tiny bit of relief back into the neck; I had it super flat
2. Slightly lowered string action (still within the EBMM recommended range)
2. Made a few more passes at bouncing back and forth between the tuners and intonation screws making tiny, incremental adjustments

This got me very close, to the point my ear isn't sensitive enough to hear the difference. To your point Dr Kev, fretted notes being off would annoy me more than open strings, so I have it where my fretted notes are pretty much spot on up and down the neck and the open strings are one tuner bar (1/5 of a semi tone I guess?) sharp.

Crisis averted; thanks for the sanity check guys.