American Pro Jazzmaster- Intonation Issue

[RoséBear]

I have an American Pro with a mastery bridge and I’m having a very difficult time trying to intonate it. Every string EVERY string is bang on except for the A string, which is flat. I usually test my intonation by playing the octaves at the 12th fret (Playing the high A on both the a and g strings) and it’s definitely out of tune.

Anyone have any remedy’s for this? Considering the mastery is only a two saddle bridge?
I’ve tried a few packs of strings. GHS boomers actually intonated the best, but I’m not sure that’s all too important.

[timtam]

So each string intonates OK (open string or 12th-fret harmonic vs fretted 12th match) but then the A/G octaves are still out ? Or you can't even adjust the Mastery to get the A intonated at the 12th ?

[Futuron]

If you tune the string so it's in tune at 12 fret, are other frets out or just the nut or what?

[RoséBear]

So each string intonates OK (open string or 12th-fret harmonic vs fretted 12th match) but then the A/G octaves are still out ? Or you can't even adjust the Mastery to get the A intonated at the 12th ?

The latter, the A is consistently flat while everything else is perfect

[timtam]

So each string intonates OK (open string or 12th-fret harmonic vs fretted 12th match) but then the A/G octaves are still out ? Or you can't even adjust the Mastery to get the A intonated at the 12th ?

The latter, the A is consistently flat while everything else is perfect

Ok I get you now - you can't shorten the A string by enough to un-flatten it with the range available from the Mastery's 3-string, shared saddles, correct ? Is the front of the saddle hitting the front lip ?

Are you using 12th fret harmonic vs fretted 12th, or open string vs fretted 12th ? They should be the same, but sometimes they're not.

[RoséBear]

So each string intonates OK (open string or 12th-fret harmonic vs fretted 12th match) but then the A/G octaves are still out ? Or you can't even adjust the Mastery to get the A intonated at the 12th ?

The latter, the A is consistently flat while everything else is perfect

Ok I get you now - you can't shorten the A string by enough to un-flatten it with the range available from the Mastery's 3-string, shared saddles, correct ? Is the front of the saddle hitting the front lip ?

Are you using 12th fret harmonic vs fretted 12th, or open string vs fretted 12th ? They should be the same, but sometimes they're not.

Correct! No, the front of the saddle isn’t. Both the D and E strings are already a hair sharp and I really don’t want to make them any sharper to compensate for the flat A. I’m going completely with fretted vs open, I don’t usually intonate with harmonics.

Starting to think it’s a me thing. I’m noticing on most of my guitars, the A saddle is almost level with the D, including my mustang, and any guitar I own with a TOM. Perhaps I really like to have that A octave at the 12th extra in tune because I spend most of my time in that area.

[timtam]

Yeah it's beginning to sound like one of those idiosyncracies of tuning that means it can never be perfect ... esp with a two-saddle bridge. It's smart to tune to make the area of the neck where you mostly play the most in-tune, but maybe you can't quite get to that in this case - the Mastery doesn't have that flexibility ... and I can't think of any way of adjusting it short of maybe deepening the front edge of the E and D notches to give you more forward placement on the A. You could try a Mustang-style bridge to see if you can get closer to where you want to be.

[RoséBear]

Yeah it's beginning to sound like one of those idiosyncracies of tuning that means it can never be perfect ... esp with a two-saddle bridge. It's smart to tune to make the area of the neck where you mostly play the most in-tune, but maybe you can't quite get to that in this case - the Mastery doesn't have that flexibility ... and I can't think of any way of adjusting it short of maybe deepening the front edge of the E and D notches to give you more forward placement on the A. You could try a Mustang-style bridge to see if you can get closer to where you want to be.

It’s an American Pro, so it came with a modified JM bridge w mustang saddles already. Nothing at all wrong with that bridge, I just loved the mastery on my jaguar and I figured I’d pick it up on this one too.

I just switched back to the regular bridge that came stock and everything is perfect now. It even feels a little better- probably because the neck pocket is angled and all in all, all these parts were MADE specifically for each other. I’ll probably end up selling the mastery. Shame it didn’t work out on this guitar. Thanks for the help though

[minimumnishe]

Just made a post in the Mastery thread and mentioned that I had the same problem on various brands and gauges of strings. Mastery's suck.