I posted this yesterday but then deleted it because it somehow sorted itself (or I just overlooked it)

I recently put 2 extra tremolo springs in my strat to get the bridge to sit against the body and now i cannot get the intonation correct on both e strings because the saddle needs to come forward but the two screws (I think they're called pivot screws) either end of the bridge are blocking them from coming forward.

Does anybody have any ideas on how to solve this problem?

Any help or advice is greatly appreciated

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"Blind faith in your leaders, or in anything, will get you killed" - Bruce Springsteen

Blocking them like they're running out of screw lenght? Firstly, you'll never be in perfect intonation, I figured that out after month driving myself crazy with the low E on a strat years ago before I had any idea about what I was doing (fixing them).
Sometimes, as weird as it sounds, the saddle actually has to go the other way. Whenever i do anything that will greatly change the tremolo; heavier strings, lighter strings, etc. I start intonation from scratch; I draw all the saddles back to the back of the plate.
Then I tune open to pitch, check the intonation at the 12th, adjust, repeat.. for the other 5 strings as well.

Ive had strings do the same thing; they wont intonate at all. No matter how much longer/shorter i make the string. Then i pulled the saddle all the way back, started again, and BAM, it was intonated, but nowhere near where the saddle looked like it needed to go.

Or you can just go back to float.

PS. if you're going to do this, if possible, its best to do all the intonation adjusting on a set of strings you'll be replacing. In other words, dont put on new strings, then adjust the intonation, unless you're changing string gauge then you have to put them on, or if you already did. But in the future; do as much setup with the strings that are on the guitar as you can. No need kinking up a perfectly good set of new strings.

If the guitar had proper intonation before you added the springs, it should be pretty darned close after, too.

I'm wondering if when you brought the back of the trem plate down to the top of the guitar, whether you brought the front of the plate down too. Are the trem pivot points resting on the proper, indented portion of the suppost posts? If not, I'd suspect that your action would be lower than it was before you added the springs.

Of course, we're all assuming you're adjusting your intonation correctly, too. Comparing the harmonic at the 12th fret to the lightly fretted note at the 12th fret? More than one person has compared the open note on a string to the 12th harmonic on the same string....just askin'.

you had a look at the intonation part of this, yeh?

http://www.fender.com/support/articles/ ... etup-guide

If you start intonating with the Hi E bridge piece set to scale....should be pretty easy from there...bridge flat or no.

Cheers,
rob

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rob Schwarz
Director,Fender Customer Service
Proudly serving Fender Customers
for over 30 years

Hi Sam: I wrote a careful, detailed reply to your question yesterday, only to hit "submit" and discover that you had deleted the thread. That was frustrating.

But now that Rob is on the case I suspect we can leave you in his highly capable hands. None better.

Cheers - C

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If I remember, I had the same problem few years ago. After couple days I can do a good intonation.
It look that is some instability of the neck, the neck truss rod, don't have same tension AND poor guitar tuner . I have now a Peterson VS II , it is lot better than my Boss TU-12H.

So tke your time and with the good advice from Rob Schwarz-Fender

Now I think with my experience it won't take so long to set the right intonation when moving the bridge.