octavedoctor
New member
I'm seeing a lot of this on Gibsons lately. There's always been the odd one but now it seems to be on all of them.
The bridge seems to be about a quarter inch too far forward so you have to crank the saddles all the way back to get the intonation tempered. Sometimes you can't get it right on the third string even if you reverse the saddle (which is not a good idea anyway despite the fact that it's common practice).
It seems to me to be a simple equation: you place the front of the saddles double the distance from the nut to the 12th fret.
i thought, at first, that they were probably doing something stupid like measuring the scale from the nut to the mounting posts; that'd do it, but I think their error is of a more subtle order than that.
I remembered that American manufacturers have clung, unwisely, to imperial measurements, rejecting the SI system.
Check out the following series of photos
It's apparent from these that the bridge is perfectly placed for a 24.5" scale. However when you look at the position of the 12th fret it's obvious that it is not 12.25" from the nut.
My theory?
I think they've got themselves a new CNC machine...
I think that it works on metric parameters and they've programmmed it using a conversion factor of 25.5mm = 1.00" instead of the correct 25.4mm = 1.00".
If you look at the photo of the 12th fret against the metric side of the rule you can see that the 12th fret lies approx 312mm from the nut. It's actually a very tiny bit more than that but you can't see it because of the parallax shift in the photo.
This would equate to a scale of 624mm plus a tiny bit.
A 24.5" scale converted to metric using the wrong conversion factor of 25.5mm to the inch works out at 624.75mm which is almost exactly what we are seeing.
Another possibility is that they are contracting out the manufacture of their boards and the subcontractor is working on metric dimensions while the assemblers at the factory are still placing the bridge 24.5" from the nut.
Either way it's a pretty shocking indictment of Gibsons competence as a guitar manufacturer. I've had no respect for them for years but I'm now convinced that the best destination for a Gibson is the trash compactor...
The bridge seems to be about a quarter inch too far forward so you have to crank the saddles all the way back to get the intonation tempered. Sometimes you can't get it right on the third string even if you reverse the saddle (which is not a good idea anyway despite the fact that it's common practice).
It seems to me to be a simple equation: you place the front of the saddles double the distance from the nut to the 12th fret.
i thought, at first, that they were probably doing something stupid like measuring the scale from the nut to the mounting posts; that'd do it, but I think their error is of a more subtle order than that.
I remembered that American manufacturers have clung, unwisely, to imperial measurements, rejecting the SI system.
Check out the following series of photos
It's apparent from these that the bridge is perfectly placed for a 24.5" scale. However when you look at the position of the 12th fret it's obvious that it is not 12.25" from the nut.
My theory?
I think they've got themselves a new CNC machine...
I think that it works on metric parameters and they've programmmed it using a conversion factor of 25.5mm = 1.00" instead of the correct 25.4mm = 1.00".
If you look at the photo of the 12th fret against the metric side of the rule you can see that the 12th fret lies approx 312mm from the nut. It's actually a very tiny bit more than that but you can't see it because of the parallax shift in the photo.
This would equate to a scale of 624mm plus a tiny bit.
A 24.5" scale converted to metric using the wrong conversion factor of 25.5mm to the inch works out at 624.75mm which is almost exactly what we are seeing.
Another possibility is that they are contracting out the manufacture of their boards and the subcontractor is working on metric dimensions while the assemblers at the factory are still placing the bridge 24.5" from the nut.
Either way it's a pretty shocking indictment of Gibsons competence as a guitar manufacturer. I've had no respect for them for years but I'm now convinced that the best destination for a Gibson is the trash compactor...
oed: :chairshot
