restringing my guitar help!

[Leedogg]

I've never restrung a gibson-type guitar before. I'm used to the fender-through-the-body way. I have a Dean that I'm restringing and I was pretty sure I had it figured out. After I removed my old strings, I took the opportunity to clean the hell out of it. However in doing so, the bridge and the metal part that the strings were attached to fell-off, now I think I'm in trouble. I was very perplexed because my string was right on the pickups, then I started to fiddle with the bridge again to lift the strings up off the pickups. I'm wondering how precise it has to be? Meaning that the bridge, should be perfectly parallel with the body of the guitar. I looked up some information about my style of bridge, and found out that I may have possibly thrown the intonation of my guitar out of whack during this whole ordeal. What exactly is intonation? How will I know if mine is messed up? How do I fix it if it is? Did I fubar anything, or am I just making a mountain out of a mole hill. Please help!!

http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~lw241999/misc/dean.gif

[Edited by Leedogg on 10-04-2003 at 02:16 AM]

[chucklivesoninmyheart]

As long as the bridge and tailpiece didnt fly off and kill someone,your fine.I havnt much experience with the "tune-o-matic" type bridge with the stop-bar tail piece either.I just screw around with its height until the its "the way it was before".I dont know.keep it level and just adjust your pickup height to address the strings being to close issue.

[hairbndrckr]

Aw She-it, you broke it... Pack the guitar up with the part and send it to me and I will see if I can fix it... Of course don't be surprised if it get lost in "The Collection"
:)

[Karma In The South]

Just reattach it and restring. Retune then check if the harmonic at the 12th fret is the same as the open string, itll show up the same on a tuner. If theyre the same it means the intonation is perfect. If not, youll have to adjust the bridge by unscrewing the little sliding things at the bridge. Someone else could explain it better.

[John O'Carroll]

Put the stop bar back in place, make sure you put the bridge on correctly (check the saddles, they should be further away from the pickups on the bass side, closer on the treble side).

Check the intonation as follows: tune the guitar to normal pitch. Checking the open string and the 12th fret harmonic is NOT the correct way to check/set intonation. You must compare the 12th fret harmonic with the FRETTED note at the 12th fret, not with the open string. When all six strings agree with each other in this measurement, THEN your intonation will be close to "perfect".

[Karma In The South]

I thought it was the open string, I thought it should logically be the open string but Ive been told its the open string. Theyre the same pitch arent they?

[John O'Carroll]

Well, let's think about it. The open string and the harmonic at the 12th fret (or very close to it - read on) will ALWAYS sound the same. The "12th fret harmonic" is simply the mid-point of the string length, so what you are checking is the open string against half of the open string !!!

Intonation is setting the lengths of the strings so that they LINE UP accurately with the frets. In order to accomplish this, a reference to the FRETS must be made.
So to set intonation, you compare the 12th fret fretted note to either 1)the open string or 2)the 12th fret harmonic. Usually, the 12th fret harmonic is used. When these agree, then your intonation is set.

[Karma In The South]

Ahh I thought the harmonics pitch varied according to the intonation. No wonder my intonations always been perfect!