Intonation adjustment on a Pedal Steel

Ron Wendler · From: Southern Minnesota, USA

I'm building a simple pedal steel and I got to thinking about the intonation adjustment. On a 6 string, intonation is adjusted by moving each saddle on the bridge. A pedal steel doesn't have saddle that adjust on its bridge. There are changers that adjust for peddle movement but they do not adjust like a saddle does. Does making sure the scale length is spot on both at the 12 fret and open? Am I making something harder than it is?
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A fine instrument is like a lady. Treat it nice and it will make lovely music.

Fred · From: Amesbury, MA

Intonation adjustment is to compensate for stretching the string sharp when pressing in down to a fret (or fingerboard on a fretless instrument). This doesn't happen on a steel guitar so no compensation is needed.

So, yes, get your string length right. The twelfth fret line should be at the midpoint. Exact is nice, but if your off a little bit it won't matter. We play in tune with our ears not by meticulously lining the bar up with the fret markers.

Ron Wendler · From: Southern Minnesota, USA

This is another world for me to learn. Thank you for enlightening me on this. I so love the steel and looking forward to playing it some day
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A fine instrument is like a lady. Treat it nice and it will make lovely music.

Ian Rae · From: Redditch, England

Good explanation, Fred.
The joy of this instrument us that however high you go, it's all automatically in tune as long as you keep the bar straight. Surprise your friends!
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Ross Shafer · From: Petaluma, California

Bar pressure determines how much deflection a string will experience. If you look closely, especially when playing single note stuff with the bar's nose, there can easily be as much or more deflection as that found on a fretted guitar. Your ear/hand skills are your intonation tools.

While I'm not a player and don't even try anymore. That said...Thankfully, I do have a pretty good ear. My first steel was purchased from Bobby Seymour. He sent me an MSA with a fret board from another brand that had a 1/4" different scale than that of the guitar. Playing in tune was no problem at all regardless of the frets being in the wrong positions. While I did see that my bar wasn't exactly over the frets when playing it didn't bother me. I didn't actually realize the dimensional difference until I was getting ready to sell that guitar at which point I felt pretty dumb.

The fret lines on a steel are very much like stop signs in Italy....a suggestion...

Bo Borland · From: South Jersey -

Was this changer adjusted to compensate for intonation?

Richard Sinkler · From: aka: Rusty Strings -- Missoula, Montana

On ZB Custom guitars, notice the nut has 2 slots and screws that look to be for adjusting the location of the nut. I wonder if they were for adjusting intonation.

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J D Sauser · From: Wellington, Florida

Intonation is a big issue on any stringed instrument to which pressure is applied to the strings.
More strings - more individual detuning ratios to pressure !
What aggravates the annoying phenomenon on PSG more than on non-pedal steel, is the large radius of the changer-bridge. As pressure is applied to a string the sting is not only stretched but also arrives at that radius from an angle which become steeper was we bring the pressure point closer to the bridge, wrapping and thus also shortening the string length. And that again each string reacting differently.

I thin those who know me the little they can get to know me from reading my rants on here, know that my "pill-for-all-ailments" is to move the changer and tuning to the left (nut) and have a "Clean" bridge (like a non-pedal guitar).
For such style of bridge I favor the design used on the original Rickenbacher Fripan, which is slotted to hold a bridge "bar". I like those because I can prepare inserts of for each string or group of types of strings in different materials to compensate for liveliness or against shrillness. Like wise, as these inserts can have some "meat" to them 3mm or 1/8th of an inch... they can be shaped to compensate for scale length intonation (similar to a floating wooden bridge on a Jazz guitar.
The "roll-on" shortening above described does evidently not happen on these bridges.

... J-D.
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