Interesting guitar, interesting problem...

mushmouth · Post by **mushmouth** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 9:50 am

I have a guitar with an interesting story in my possession right now. One of my best friends worked for Richard Beck in the early 80s out in Arizona at Beck Guitars. Richard is a luthier who made guitars for a lot of the rock stars of that time, Lynch, Prince, etc. According to my friend, this particular guitar (a soloist body, tele neck) is from a stack of bodies and necks EVH had Richard get for him. Eddie went through 20 necks and bodies and picked his 5 favorite bodies and necks to build guitars with. The guitar I have is made of Eddie's #6 choices that he was torn on when choosing his #5 but didn't keep. I've verified the story, and he now is willing to sell it to me for a very low price, so I finally got around to checking it out and found a BIZARRE problem.

I'm no guitar setup guru, but last night went to check the intonation. Chime the 12th fret, then fret the 12th fret, get it adjusted so they both read in tune. HOWEVER, when I then fret on any of the first frets, the notes are sharp (no, I'm not fretting hard and making them go sharp), and gradually gets back into tune the further up the neck you go toward the 12th fret. Open is in tune, 12th fret is in tune, lowest notes on the string are sharp by at least 2 large increments on my little chromatic tuner's VU needle.

WHAT WOULD CAUSE THAT? Neck pocket cut too short or too far? Fret distances off at that end of the neck? Wrong scale neck for that body? I just don't get it. I'm sure people have seen this before. I used to own a 777 Jem (the green one) and it did a similar thing: E chord in tune, D chord out of tune, A chord pretty much in tune, G chord out of tune. It's maddening. This guitar sounds K I L L E R. If this issue is fixable, I'm going to buy it. Anyone have any insight?

JD · Post by JD » Thu Feb 08, 2007 11:19 am

Your guesses are all the possibilities I could come up with.

Post by **VelvetGeorge** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:10 pm

If the 12th fret intonates properly than the scale is correct. Or rather, the 12 the fret is located in the right place.

You'll need a real luthier's opinion on this, but it seems to me that something was miscalculated on the fret spacing. Or perhaps the scale like you suspect.

Maybe it can be fixed with a simple change of the nut location. or possibly the neck needs to be reset. I hope it's the prior.

Here's my luthier frined here in Flint:

www.luczakguitars.com

Ron can most likely answer this.

george

St August · Post by **St August** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 1:35 pm

He can help you for sure he sets up all my guitars

Ron is very cool forsure

Bad Kitty · Post by **Bad Kitty** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 3:31 pm

Is the nut too high?

Mike

ScottW · Post by **ScottW** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 4:01 pm

Bad Kitty wrote:Is the nut too high?

Mike

That was my first thought, too.

45auto · Post by **45auto** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 4:02 pm

+1 surely frets are not misplaced... but anything is possible.

mushmouth · Post by **mushmouth** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 6:09 pm

It has an original floyd rose, so the nut is the floyd nut... *shrug* ?

NY Chief · Post by **NY Chief** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 6:12 pm

How about the bridge? 12th fret s/b 1/2 way between both (adjusted for action height compensation)

Bad Kitty · Post by **Bad Kitty** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 6:26 pm

Try taking the nut off and see if it's got shims under it. If it does, take them off and try it.

Mike

mushmouth · Post by **mushmouth** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:11 pm

No shim under the nut.

As for the measurements, I lined up the neck to my strat neck and it's spot on for the fret distance. Rules that out.

I used a tape measure and am confused by EXACTLY where to make the measurements from. At what point of the nut, right at the edge where the nut begins? Center of the 12th fret wire? And where on the Floyd Rose? At the very point the string makes contact with the saddle? Or the point where it's bent down into the restraining clamp?

How would the nut being raised too high affect intonation? Does it tend to make things behave as I'm describing? Nut too high = first frets will be sharp?

ScottW · Post by **ScottW** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:14 pm

mushmouth wrote: Nut too high = first frets will be sharp?

Bingo!

mushmouth · Post by **mushmouth** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 7:26 pm

The neck has J U M B O frets. Wonder if that's a reason they would have made it that high? I don't have another floyd-equipped guitar here to compare how high the strings should be at the nut, which is of course affected by fret height. These frets are huge, and they feel amazing to play...

I should probably take it to the local luthier and see what he has to say. Is there a standard of what the distance should be between the string and fret wire top at the first fret? That's the only measurement I can think of to take to determine if the nut is too high. I've been playing guitar for 25 years and it's whack that I don't know anything about setup physics.

St August · Post by **St August** » Thu Feb 08, 2007 8:03 pm

The distance at the low E On my Jacksons Is just shy of a 16th of an inch
The route on the neck is 3/16 of an inch deep from the top of the fretboard..

mushmouth · Post by **mushmouth** » Fri Feb 09, 2007 2:07 am

Thanks to everyone for their help. Mystery solved. It only took 5 hours.

I'll detail it here in case anyone ever has a Floyd problem like this.

First of all, I followed all the setup instructions from the beginning, to the LETTER, found here http://www.floydrose.com/originaltremol ... ic_topic_3 My first full setup and intonation, on a Floyd no less. Good god.

I found the following through the process.

1) When I started and was having the intonation problems on those low frets, the base of the bridge was not perfectly parallel (floating). It was tilted toward the nut slightly. That was problem 1. It was messing with the intonation as it moved the strings set point at the bridge slightly toward the nut.

2) After restringing and following the tuning and leveling instructions at that site, I then went to intonation. 4 of the saddles were at least 1/4" off of where they needed to be. It was drastic how far off they were. Being that out of whack has to affect even the bottom frets.

I haven't played a guitar with a Floyd for 13 years. Forgot how sensitive setup is on these beasts.

Once I got it intoned, retuned, and locked down. I hit a G chord through my 12 series and almost wet myself. It was perfect. D chord perfect. A perfect. E perfect. Then I turned the amp on 10, played the Alone Again solo, threw threw the guitar on the floor and had sex with it.

I guess I have to buy it now. It's the honorable thing to do.