intonation

[Marc Day]

Anyone have any hints or tips on how to deal with the intonation on a fretless accurately. I've done it plenty of times on fretted basses, which is dead easy, so I know how it's done.

Doing it accurately with no frets is a bit of a different potato. Surely it can't just be a case of holding down the sting and hoping you're not too far out? 

BTW. I have posted this on the repairs and tech forum as well. Just thought a few more of you might see it here.

[CameronJ]

This is a very good question. I guess I’d always assumed that it was less of a concern on fretless given that it’s...well...fretless. Finger positioning can be adjusted slightly in a way that frets can’t.

Ignoring the above, use harmonics.

[LukeFRC]

7 minutes ago, CameronJ said:

Ignoring the above, use harmonics.

I might be missing something here... but won't harmonics always be in tune?

[Guest subaudio]

Oops, didn't read the thread properly.

Edited May 19, 2019 by subaudio

[knirirr]

51 minutes ago, Marc Day said:

 

Doing it accurately with no frets is a bit of a different potato. Surely it can't just be a case of holding down the sting and hoping you're not too far out?

That's all I've ever done on unlined fretless basses and it's worked well enough. If there's a better technique I'd be interested to hear it.

[Marc Day]

Just now, knirirr said:

That's all I've ever done on unlined fretless basses and it's worked well enough. If there's a better technique I'd be interested to hear it.

Me too. The board isn't lined either. Think what I'll do is put a temporary line square across the neck as a reference and hold the string down with something fairly narrow like the edge of a spoon handle. Should work.

I thought about using harmonics as well. Obviously they won't ring properly if you don't hit them in the right place, but you can still be a bit out and still close enough for it to work. Also, and I'm not really sure this, but with the intonation being out, because the string length out, wouldn't that put the sweet spot of the harmonic in a slightly different place too? We must be talking about very small margins here, but it makes sense to me.

 

 

[knirirr]

2 minutes ago, Marc Day said:

Also, and I'm not really sure this, but with the intonation being out, because the string length out, wouldn't that put the sweet spot of the harmonic in a slightly different place too? We must be talking about very small margins here, but it makes sense to me.

 

 

I'm not sure either, but I suppose you could make several adjustments using the harmonics each time.

 

[Marc Day]

2 minutes ago, knirirr said:

I'm not sure either, but I suppose you could make several adjustments using the harmonics each time.

 

Strangely a guitarist mate just called me about something else and I asked hi what he thought and without being quite sure himself, he reckons I'm probably right. Quite honestly, since there doesn't seem to be a method I didn't know about, I think I'll go with plan A, which should work well enough and leave it at that. Thanks everyone for your input though.

[Stub Mandrel]

The answer is simple.
 

The position of the harmonic won't ever be the same as the correct spot.

What matters is if you go to finger the octave, you get the octave. The most accurate position will vary with your fingering technique and the shape of your fingertips, action, string type etc.

Aim to finger as accurately as you can in your ideal 'twelfth fret' position adjust the intonation so this note is in tune with the harmonic.

[Grangur]

Why, @Marc Day do you have 2 threads to ask this question?

As I've said in the other thread:  

Use a cocktail stick under the string at the line position,  with your finger fretting the string behind the stick.

You can use tape to hold the stick in place if you can't work out how you can get the string to hold the stick in place when you push it down.

 

 

[Marc Day]

Gentlemen,

Thank you all very much for your input. I think I have enough info now to deal with this little issue, if it actually does need to be done in the end. The discussion has taken up a good deal of my time today and looks like it will still run on for a while, so I'd prefer to bow out at this point. Please don't think me rude if I don't respond to any messages etc, it's just that I have a lot of other things to attend to and simply don't have the time.

Thanks again.

[Marc Day]

4 minutes ago, Grangur said:

Why, @Marc Day do you have 2 threads to ask this question?

As I've said in the other thread:  

Use a cocktail stick under the string at the line position,  with your finger fretting the string behind the stick.

You can use tape to hold the stick in place if you can't work out how you can get the string to hold the stick in place when you push it down.

 

 

Being fairly new to the site and not that familiar with how it works, I felt that although the repair and tech forum was the right place for it I wasn't sure it might reach more people in general discussion so I did both. 

[Grangur]

Welcome to Basschat. This is a pretty active forum. So it doesn't matter where you post, it all gets read.

Good luck with your bass. If you need more help do come back.

See you around.

[SpondonBassed]

On 19/05/2019 at 19:32, Marc Day said:

Surely it can't just be a case of holding down the sting

 

Edited May 20, 2019 by SpondonBassed

[Stub Mandrel]

Sting - The Poultry Years

 

[bazzbass]

make the G string 34" (if that's the scale length), set the D string saddle further backby the thickness of the D string, and so on. Will be pretty close.

[jacko]

use an accurate tuner to find out exactly where the 12th fret should be and put a piece of tape across the fingerboard so you don't lose your place. I then use my fingernail at the line to compare with the harmonic and adjust accordingly.  

Or. Follow carol kaye's advice and pull all the bridge saddles right back against the  stops cos no-one can tell the difference in intonation anyway. ( I read this in an interview she did, tried it then decided she was talking shite BTW). 

[oldslapper]

If you’re playing an unlined fretless, then you are (by default) a superior musician to all others in any band situation. Therefore all other instruments are out of tune with you.

This revelation has helped me enormously and haven't bothered setting up intonation or tune my fretless for years. Let the peasants fret about that.

🧐

[Stub Mandrel]

1 minute ago, oldslapper said:

If you’re playing an unlined fretless, then you are (by default) a superior musician to all others in any band situation. Therefore all other instruments are out of tune with you.

This revelation has helped me enormously and haven't bothered setting up intonation or tune my fretless for years. Let the peasants fret about that.

🧐

Seconded. If anyone tells you you're out, just start explaining 'just intonation' to them and after ten minutes they will zone out and never hassle you again.

 

[Marc Day]

On 20/05/2019 at 03:28, Grangur said:

Welcome to Basschat. This is a pretty active forum. So it doesn't matter where you post, it all gets read.

Good luck with your bass. If you need more help do come back.

See you around.

Point taken, thanks very much. Looks very much like it is as Hit and miss as I was sure it wouldn't be. I have the info I need and a plan to deal with it, so I should be fine now. Cheers mate. 

[Marc Day]

2 hours ago, oldslapper said:

If you’re playing an unlined fretless, then you are (by default) a superior musician to all others in any band situation. Therefore all other instruments are out of tune with you.

This revelation has helped me enormously and haven't bothered setting up intonation or tune my fretless for years. Let the peasants fret about that.

🧐

Might not be much help, but that's definitely the funniest comment so far. Nice one!

[Stub Mandrel]

4 minutes ago, Marc Day said:

Point taken, thanks very much. Looks very much like it is as Hit and miss as I was sure it wouldn't be. I have the info I need and a plan to deal with it, so I should be fine now. Cheers mate. 

What matters is that the intonation is set at least as accurately as you can place your fingers in a real-world playing situation.

This can be done easily in a relaxed situation working on one note at a time.

If you can do this any errors will be masked by the bigger ones you will inevitably make when playing. Most of these will be inaudible and if not you will learn to correct them as you go along (although despite what some people say it's only when playing fairly slowly that you get enough time to hear a note and correct it before moving on to the next one, in practice I find I rely mostly on muscle memory and listen out for my hand position drifting rather than individual bum notes).

+/- 5 or 6 cents is meant to be about the limit of what the ear can detect under ideal conditions. In practice you need to get notes within about +/- 12 cents of the right spot to not sound out of tune (bear in  mind the bass is rarely playing in unison with another instrument which makes exact pitch less critical as you don't get beats etc.) That means the 'critical' zone to get your finger in is about 1/4 of a semitone wide, although most of the time you probably do  better than that!

Get the intonation set to match where you finger naturally falls and it will maximise the chance of you hitting the zone when you are really shredding.

[Marc Day]

Bloody typical! After all that b*****ks the intonation was fine anyway. The up side was that the method I devised worked really well. It meant that I was able to check it properly this time and if I ever actually have to do it I'll know how. 

It might come in handy for some of you other smoothies out there, so this is what I did. It's very simple, but it works well.

Cut a narrow strip (about 2 mm) of tape and place it as squarely as poss across the neck on the octave as a reference.

Instead of holding the string down with your finger, use something narrow and rigid, so that there's far less margin for error. Anything will do, but the Allen key for the truss rod was handy and I used that. Job done.

Looks like I answered my own question in the end, but thanks again everyone for your input.