1st and 12th fret in tune.. others not

mswiggins

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I built a soprano uke kit from Grizzly.com and replaced the strings with Aquila.
I built the kit to spec and it looks good and sounds good.

The sound is good, but I have having a time getting it tuned correctly.
The 1st and 12th frets for all 4 strings are in tune, but the others tend to be sharp.

As you can imagine any chord starts to sound off when playing.

Do I need to raise/lower the bridge?
is the fret board off?

Thanks for any insight?
 
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Various things it could be but the very first thing with Aquila nylguts is this. WAIT until they settle before judging the intonation. You cannot intonate new Nylgut strings. Give them at least 2 weeks to settle down and become stable and then assess the intonation. Any adjustment you make to new Nylgut strings will turn out to be wrong when they have settled down.

EDIT. The other thing to do is measure where the frets, nut and saddle have been placed in relation to each other. Go to the Steward McDonald fret calculator and input the data of your particular build. Then with a steel rule and a set of vernier callipers very carefully measure the instrument to see if everything is to spec. Certainly don't do anything until you know what you are dealing with.

Anthony
 
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Are the frets level?

Are they "tall"?
 
The ukulele is a kit and I built it to the instructions.
I will let the strings settle in before making a quick judgement.

I do not know how to answer if the frets are not too high. I can compare to a guitar. I will have to visit a local store to judge if the frets are too high.

Thanks
 
Kits can be good but sometimes it needs knowledge to make fine adjustments to get the best from them. Anyway let the strings settle for 2 weeks, retuning the instrument until the tuning is stable and then assess it again.

Anthony
 
The nut might well be high, but it would have to be very high to affect intonation much beyond the fourth or fifth fret.

Is the intonation off on all frets by about the same amount, or does it get progressively worse or better as you work up the fretboard from the first to the 12th?

John
 
BTW, welcome to UU. You might want to post your question in the tech section - there are several very good luthiers who hang out there and they might be able to help you better than us mere mortals. :)

John
 
The nut might well be high, but it would have to be very high to affect intonation much beyond the fourth or fifth fret.

Is the intonation off on all frets by about the same amount, or does it get progressively worse or better as you work up the fretboard from the first to the 12th?

John

the intonation seems to get a little better as you work from 1st to 12th fret.

For example.
A string
Open In tune
3rd fret sharp
5th fret less sharp
7th fret same as 5th fret
10 fret even less sharp
12th fret in tune.
 
I lowered the nut very slightly and it has helped a great deal.
We are talking about the thickness of a piece of paper. But it is helping.

I also had to loosen the strings, take the nut off and the put it all back together. Maybe something else was going on.
 
You're very brave to have built a Uke! I did build a kantele from a kit, but it's a zither so no complications like a fretboard to deal with. Out of curiosity, where did you get your kit?
 
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