The perfect storm to set off my OCD

[arnie5150]

I traded recently for a 2020 Inspired by Gibson, Epiphone Les Paul Junior. It was dead mint. I put it through my normal tests and it passed. The action was a little high but there was plenty of room on the stopbar tailpiece to take it down. All of the frets rang true and I am sure that I checked the intonation by playing some Sabbath bar chords up around the 12th but I couldn't be 100% positive. When I got it home I broke out my calipers and discovered that the previous owner had a set of 12 gauge strings on it. The strings seemed to be relatively new but I took this as the perfect opportunity to F-One oil the fretboard, clean and set up the guitar with my customary Ernie Ball green pack .10's. All went well until I go to set the intonation. I do not have any experience with the lightning bolt tailpiece and I assumed that there would be a compromise in setting the intonation. I adjusted the grub screws and got every string just about perfect using my Snark hertz tuner except for the A! It was WAY sharp. If I moved the bridge back the E and D strings would go flat and the A was still way sharp. I then thought it must be a poorly cut nut slot just on the A. The nut was fine. I took the string off and put it back on - same thing. I didn't have any more strings so I had to wait until the next day to try a new string. Well, I put the new string on it and it was perfectly intonated. I have only had 2 bad strings in 25 years of string changes and they were about 24 years apart. I emailed Ernie Ball and they were cool, shipping a replacement set to me free of charge. All's well that ends well...

 

[arlum]

It's surprising that the string made that much of a difference in intonation. I've certainly experienced what you're talking about but not to the degree that it would be that noticeable. Glad you got it all up to snuff.

 

[Andy B]

Every now and then you get a bad string in my experience.

 

[GibbyTwin]

It does happen. I was stringing up an acoustic bass guitar and could not get the D string intonated. It made no sense and I was scratching my head trying to figure out what the heck since it was fine with the old strings. Upon real close inspection I found that the winding on the D string got narrower (thinner) about a third of the way up. It was alright till about the 8th or 9th fret and then was off. I've never seen anything like it before or since.

 

[kuch]

Just goes to show.... DON"T PANIC!!!

 

[arnie5150]

It's surprising that the string made that much of a difference in intonation. I've certainly experienced what you're talking about but not to the degree that it would be that noticeable. Glad you got it all up to snuff.

I was surprised as well! It was a quarter of the way to being an A# at the 12th!

 

[arlum]

That's crazy.

 

[985plowboy]

Dang.

 

[Papanate]

I never heard of a bad string in 30 years of playing.

 

[chris m.]

I'm glad you shared this story. Might save me a whole lotta head-scratchin' in the future. I'll file this one away for future reference...