Using Rods For Nuts & Bridges

[BillyJ]

Hi all.
I hope I can explain clearly the question that I have.
I have built a basic lap steel in the past using a piece of flat sided bone for the nut that from memory was about 1/4" thick. I used an old strat hardtail bridge. The scale was 22 1/2" so I placed the top edge of the fretboard against the fretboard side of the nut. Then adjusted the saddles so that they were exactly 11 1/4" from 12th fret. Intonation was perfect.
Now my question relates to using 1/2" round rod for nut and bridge. If I screw a round 1/2" rod down for neck and place fretboard up against the fretboard side, then screw a rod same size for bridge with the centre line of the rod 22 1/2" from fretboard side of nut, would the intonation be out because the string would actually be in the centrline of the rod and the top edge of the fretboard would be say approx 1/4 " towards the bridge from centreline of rod used for nut?
Hope this question is understandable guys. I'm just concerned about getting intonation right. So that if I place tone bar on fretlines going up the neck intonation will be correct.

Thanks in advance for replies

[Pat Comeau]

Hi Billy,

You always mesure from where the strings makes contact...on a round bridge it's the middle.

[mac639]

My guess is that you'd have to chop 1/4" off the fretboard at the nut end to make it correct. I remember about a year or so ago getting into a major discussion on the SGF about this subject. Theoretically if you sat exactly behind the bar on each fret then exactly over the fret marking would be the right place. But you don't! You sit off to the right of the bar (with it in your left hand) So your viewing angle is different and that changes the way you see the bar position. There are lots of other instruments like regular violins, stand-up bass, slide trombones etc. where you have to depend on your EAR to get the note accurate, and the steel guitar is one of them. I taught violin for many years and it was a real struggle to get some students to play accurately especially if their pitch recognition was not too great.
Cheers, Mac

[BillyJ]

Thanks for the messages guys. I thought that to get it right, I would need to take 1/4" off top of Fretboard.
Only new here and have seen some great looking steels and very interesting topics here since I joined.

Cheers
Billy

[Paul Higgins]

Hello BilllyJ
I made a lap first one..and I used 3/8 rod as and As Pat has said the string's hit the bridge and the nut in the middle..What I did was to fix the nut then measure the scale length from the middle of the nut and put the middle of the bridge on the 22 1/2 scale...

But that was from scratch I was luckey enough Allan sent me a CAD drawing with all the measurements marked on it so it made it very easy so dident even have to work out how much to take off the fretboard I just had to go from nut mark center to bridge center..

Hope this helps Regards Paul

[BillyJ]

Thanks Paul