Subject: dobro spuare neck intonation
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 22:00:55 -0500

Greetings Tim,

Hi,
I've been trying to set the intonation on my dobro. It's kind of hard to eyeball and get
the steel exactly where it needs to be. I tried putting my capo over the 12th fret
but it makes kind of a dead tone. Any advice on how to set the intonation or why the tone may seem to sound unclear farther up the neck. (even though Tim was referring to adjusting the instrument's intonation...he still brings up an important question: How to correctly place the steel bar for perfect pitch attainment...)

I would suggest try working with an electronic tuner...such as the Korg Chromatic...this is a trick that some beginning violinists use to assure that they're hitting the correct notes with proper finger placement. The Dobro is innately similar to a violin in that there are no real frets to lock in the note as a true pitch...if you'll play one string at a time, when bringing the steel up to the position you're looking to play, the Korg electronic tuner can pinpoint the correct location...for instance, in playing a barred C chord at the fifth fret position, you can use the Korg to reference one string at a time...after referencing each string individually, you'll eventually find yourself playing the position correctly without the aid of the Korg.

The dobro capo is not designed to work all the way up to the 12th fret...there could be other problems such as the distance of the strings from the fingerboard is shallower not allowing the right distance for the capo to work correctly...A dobro capo is usually only used up to the fifth fret at the most...not to say that it can't be used at the 7th...only, it's far more common to use the dobro capo at the 2nd fret for the key of A...

Hope something here helps...Mickey