Advice on a ukulele with intonation issues

I’m with Campbell- just take it back. If it isn’t a construction problem and they can adjusted it properly, you can buy nut and saddle blank and experiment by making your own. It won’t cost much and you will already have the properly adjusted nut and saddle if you mess it up. It’s not too difficult but takes patience.

Double post

anthonyg said:

OK. this thread is likely to get a little heated between me and some others.

Can you draw yourself up a little grid and check each fret of each string up to fret 12 and write down if its going sharp or flat and by how much? There are going to be to many pictures to post but we need a better idea of the trend and whether its all strings or just one or 2.

What you have picture strongly suggest that its the nut at fault but more data would be good.

Is it just one string or all the strings going sharp that's a very important question to answer.
Do they start sharp but get better up the neck stay the same up the neck or get worse up the neck is also a very important question to answer.

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I don't mean for things to get heated. I will likely take it back to the store for help. Hopefully my request for a setup won't seem weird.

You brought up a good point...
Heres a breakdown for each string.
A string: sharp (like the pictures of the E string) up to 9th fret. 10 fret wavers off and on while 11th and 12th are accurate.
E string: all sharp from 1st to 12th
C string: all sharp from 1st to 12th (similar to the E string pix)
G string: 1st and 2nd fret are sharp (similar to the pix) 3rd fret to 7th fret are mostly accurate, 8th to 12th waver from accuracy to being slightly sharp.

I can send pictures if that's better but it might take a while.

daydreamyrrh said:

I don't mean for things to get heated. I will likely take it back to the store for help. Hopefully my request for a setup won't seem weird.

You brought up a good point...
Heres a breakdown for each string.
A string: sharp (like the pictures of the E string) up to 9th fret. 10 fret wavers off and on while 11th and 12th are accurate.
E string: all sharp from 1st to 12th
C string: all sharp from 1st to 12th (similar to the E string pix)
G string: 1st and 2nd fret are sharp (similar to the pix) 3rd fret to 7th fret are mostly accurate, 8th to 12th waver from accuracy to being slightly sharp.

I can send pictures if that's better but it might take a while.

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No need for you to post pictures. I will stand by my initial assessment that its an error in the nut placement and you need to take it back to them. Unless the strings are so high at the nut that its like a cheese slicer to fret anything then its not a setup error either. Its a manufacturer error.

I just wanted to make sure that my initial assessment was right in case the full data suggested something else.

anthonyg said:

Its NOT the strings at fault. Strings are BLAMED for the fault far more than they actually ARE the fault. People BLAME the strings for the fault so often that some come to believe that strings commonly are at fault. The most common error in ukuleles is inaccurate construction. Its endemic but no one in the industry cares to admit this.

In years gone by they got away with it but these days with everyone having accurate electronic tuners it easier to pick up on but the industry is still unwilling to fix the problems because it costs money to do so.

Take it back to the shop and ask them to fix the specific problem. The most likely cause of the problem is an inaccurately placed nut.

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Sorry - completely disagree. Strings are often the fault, and also the easiest thing to check first

From what I saw on your pictures, they showed that the issue was worse on the frets closer to the nut, which is a strong indicator for high action at the nut.

I wouldn't go as far as to blame the entire industry of not living up to its full potential. That may be true for some of the very cheap stuff, but most of the ukes I came across have good intonation, most of them without a specially compensated saddle. With modern tools, frets and bridges can probably be placed more accurately today than ever before.

However, intonation on fretted instrument of such a short scale length will always be a compromise, depending on several factors such as action height at both the saddle and nut, string gauges, string quality, the player's technique, the pressure he or she applies to the string, and - sure - accuracy of the build. Different strings need different compensation, and to adjust to one's personal playing style as well as to your preferred brand of strings, you'd have to compensate each string individually. Even then you might end up a couple a bit sharp (or flat) at times, because you cannot apply the exact same amount of pressure every time.

In my experience, the first place to look at is action height at both the saddle and nut. Second consideration is to try different brands/gauges of strings.

What I am not following here is why you would adjust saddle and / or not BEFORE ruling out a defective string with flat spots affecting intonation?

bazmaz said:

Sorry - completely disagree. Strings are often the fault, and also the easiest thing to check first

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The Original Poster HAS already changed strings and the fault still exist. For some reason though your sticking to your story that its still the strings that are at fault.

Rakelele said:

From what I saw on your pictures, they showed that the issue was worse on the frets closer to the nut, which is a strong indicator for high action at the nut.

I wouldn't go as far as to blame the entire industry of not living up to its full potential.

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I covered the question of a hight nut. The nut would have to be REALLY high to cause this fault and it would be obvious to spot. Its not just ukuleles failing to live up to their potential. Guitars are just as bad and knowledgeable people in other fields could give similar examples in their fields of expertise. Its the race to the bottom in mass manufacturing.

bazmaz said:

What I am not following here is why you would adjust saddle and / or not BEFORE ruling out a defective string with flat spots affecting intonation?

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Already ruled out. See above.

To the OP. Your should try the infamous matchstick trick. Take a matchstick and place it on the fretboard and up against the inside of the nut. If it doesn't stay in there tightly then yes, the action at the nut is too high. If it stays there does it fix the intonation? Let us know.

My story? OP said he changed strings. But that doesn’t rule out strings. I’ve known people change strings, pre stretch them to high heaven and create problems again...

But Ok... I’m out... fight it out amongst yourselves..

My apologies to the Original Poster for the inevitable argy bargy.

My beef is that I'm sick and tired of everything else under the sun being blamed for the problems of poor intonation when the real culprit, the Elephant in the room which is inaccurate construction gets ignored. A lot of us here are fed up with the poor state of learner ukuleles which only serves to put learners off ukuleles.

Most of us here have had to be extraordinarily stubborn in our ukulele journeys to get past the poor learner instruments and still be here.

I'm still dealing with up-the-neck intonation issues with my favorite uke, and it's driving me bug nuts. When my luthier recovers from eye surgery, I'm taking it to him.
Everything short of repositioning the bridge, or compensating the saddle has been tried with this uke.
I still think the saddle needs to be compensated. I mean, why do so many guitars come with compensated saddles if some ukes "don't need them"?
Sorry, Baz, but in this case, changing strings didn't fix a damn thing. Been tried 4 times.

I didn’t suggest that it could ONLY be strings. Only that swapping strings is a logical first step to narrowing down such problems.

anthonyg said:

My apologies to the Original Poster for the inevitable argy bargy.

My beef is that I'm sick and tired of everything else under the sun being blamed for the problems of poor intonation when the real culprit, the Elephant in the room which is inaccurate construction gets ignored. A lot of us here are fed up with the poor state of learner ukuleles which only serves to put learners off ukuleles.

Most of us here have had to be extraordinarily stubborn in our ukulele journeys to get past the poor learner instruments and still be here.

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I agree. What other products do we buy that we accept that it is going to show up in such a state that we have to plan to have to it fixed before we can use it? To me that is just insane. If we would quit buying them unless they were playable out of the box, perhaps the manufacturers would pay a bit more attention to their product. But no, we buy them as fast as we can get them, and then spend weeks and months trying to figure out why they won't play right. Come on, it is a musical instrument. That is what it is built to do, play music. If it won't, then it is a wooden thing.

Whilst I agree that it would be nice to get that - even with high end instruments though, setup issues can occur. That's why I advocate from buying from reputable ukulele dealers who do such checks before they let them out of the door.

Different string sets require different setups, different nut slots for different gauges, etc. For this reason, and in order to avoid buzzing, many factories will send out their instruments with high action, because that's a relatively easy fix, and better than giving the first impression that an instrument has a buzz. And even with a uke from a store that does a fine job at setting your instrument up, they cannot fully anticipate how hard you strum, or what other strings you're going to install in the future, so there is still a chance that you will have to do some readjustment.

I'm not trying to defend the really cheap stuff that gets sent out with a misplaced bridge or frets all over the place. Such an "instrument" will turn its owner off from making music. Even as a beginner, you'd better invest in a decent instrument and a knowledgeable store that cares for their instruments and their customers.

These discussions are frustrating because most people suggest a single solution. Obviously check for defective strings, and if the uke is close but not close enough then a different type of string might improve things. But if you have decent strings ...

Improving intonation is a process, and not that hard to remember in terms of sequence.

1. Measure from face of nut to 12th fret, and from 12th fret to saddle peak. The second measurement should be 0-3mm more than the first. If it's not, the thing isn't made right and it's major surgery to fix. Return or abandon (or learn to rebuild!)

2. Check that the nut slots slope down towards the tuners. The string has to last touch the nut at its face - if it leaves it early, that screws up intonation. If you're not sure, put a scrap of paper under the string in the slot and see if that improves the intonation - if so, your slots don't slope right.

3. Set the nut height. Hold each string down between frets 2 and 3 and check the height of that string above the first fret. If it's greater than a single thickness of ordinary printing/writing paper then it's too high, and you won't get decent intonation. Fix this by deepening the slots, keeping the slope towards the tuners.

4. Set your desired action height, which is the distance between the top of the 12th fret and the bottom of the strings. 3mm is about the highest you can really go on a uke, 2mm around the lowest. You do this by lowering the saddle, usually sanding the bottom.

5. Compensate the bridge, if you're going that far. Plenty of instructions around so I won't describe that.

But do steps 1-4 FIRST. If they're not right, whatever you do to compensate the saddle will be wrong, and so a waste of time. 1-3 find the problem in at least 50% of cases, and take 10 minutes total to do.

I forgot to add that some bargain basement ukes are hopeless because the frets aren't even in the right place. But once you get to Kala or equivalent, that's vanishingly unlikely. If this is a $20 uke you know what to expect Anything better, follow the steps above.

daydreamyrrh said:

Hi

Over a year ago I purchased a Kala KA-CG from a well-known and highly-recommend uke vendor with the set-up included.

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bazmaz said:

Whilst I agree that it would be nice to get that.................... That's why I advocate from buying from reputable ukulele dealers who do such checks before they let them out of the door.

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And the OTHER Elephant in the room.

Meh!

Its time for these "well known and highly recommended" seller to throw some weight around with the manufacturers on behalf of the buyers.

We ALL know who they are.

It’s not an ‘elephant in the room’ at all.

Volume production of anything at all means issues creep in, and a good dealer or reseller is part of the chain of weeding that out.

If you want that to stop and all instruments to arrive perfect from the factory, get ready for a drop in volumes and a hike in price... or stop buying brand name ukes...

Daydreamyrhh , the best practice for a new Uke is to communicate with the seller/Dealer/Vendor whatever you want to call them, and to work reasonably, and with mutual respect, toward a resolution.
As you've had the instrument for some time it may or may not not be a fruitful outcome, nobody can say, however it is a perfectly normal thing to communicate with them , as you've done.
So, if the dealer is willing and able to rectify the problem, then Good, and if not , or if you choose to , then you can check and rectify things yourself, and it does often take a process and it may or may not be a process of elimination, regarding those factors already mentioned, again nobody can really say for certain at this time and under the circumstances.
Another thing to check is the Nut is actually properly placed, in other words straight, level, and perpendicular to the fretboard surface , it is a possibility that it may be inclined in a lean or an improper angle , other than most suggestions are covered in previous posts.
Checking your Nut does not need to be difficult, it does require care and patience, and a little bit of manual skill, which can be challenging at first, but not to fear, working on a saddle or nut should never be something to fear in this world, which is a rat race and a battle zone at times, and nuts and saddles will cause you no serious harm. I hope you find a resolution and can enjoy your ukulele.
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