Setting intonation on a fretless

[dansouth]

No twelfth fret! How do you set the intonation so that the note positions on each string are at roughly the same position? Do techs use some sort of capo to do this?

[BenLoy]

It's kinda a voodoo thing...you can try to accurately set the intonation by checking how far you have to move your finger at the 12th fret position to be in tune with the harmonic. In my opinion, it doesn't matter as much as on a fretted bass, since the notes are going to move such a small distance that it make more sense to simply use your ears to tune...much in the same way that upright bassists do...their bridge is non-adjustable as far as intonation is concerned (at least string-to-string intonation).

[Jeff Addicott]

I just eyeball it as best I can, fingering right over the octave position marker. It's not micrometer precise, but in my experience, it can still make a big difference to ensure that the other position markers are reasonably accurate.

 

The fretless is tricky enough already, without having the visual aids be misleading (which is the primary reason I don't particularly care for those rubber-stringed Ashbory basses - I'd like them a whole lot more if the bridge was adjustable, or at least set for better intonation).

 

------------------

Jeff Addicott

http://www.jeffnet.org/~addicott/bass.html

[zujo]

mathematics brother! Measuring and considering things like neck lenght and width along with virtual placement of where frets would be. The same process to put frets on a bass.