bobsessed said:
Am I making this more difficult than I should ?:icon_scratch:
In a word, yes. But, that's ok. If you don't ask, you're forced to proceed through ignorance and/or faith, which can be uncomfortable.
Correcting intonation is always a matter of lengthening the string, as what you're compensating for is the stretch of the string incurred by fretting it, which sharpens it. In other words, if your string clearance were close to 0 at the 12th fret (impossible), the string length would be close to the scale length as there'd be almost no stretching of the string involved with fretting. Little or no compensation would be necessary.
Note that the string clearance from the fretboard gradually increases from the nut to the end of the fretboard, so the intonation is not going to be perfect along the entire scale. For that matter, fret placement prevents that happening as well. So, there have been attempts to get closer than the typical instrument by using things like Earvana or Buzz Feiten compensated nuts, adjustable saddle bridges, and even cast frets that are mathmatically corrected like the necks sold by
True Temperament.
In the end, if you can even hear it, you just live with it or risk going nuts like that one guy we all know who spends 3/4 of the time a guitar is in his hands trying to tune the damned thing and never quite getting there. Trust me: you're much better off spending that time playing. Oddly enough, the guitar will seem to learn to tune itself :laughing7: