Thanks for the advice/info/links from Rich/Spaw/Tweed. Good stuff. Cheers guys.

Being an engineer though, I can't resist tinkering. So last night it was strings off, unscrew the coverplate and see what the deal is with it! :-) Sod the manual, who needs it, get in there and get your hands dirty!

First up, you don't need to worry about the biscuit moving on the Regal, Tweed. It's glued onto the cone on mine, so I assume it will be on yours too, and just to make sure there's a couple of little wood-screws holding it on as well. There's a little play in the cone fitting into the guitar body, but only about 1mm which isn't enough to affect the intonation that much.

With the cone off, one problem was quite obvious - the bridge had warped. The bridge is made of some softwood with a hardwood top to stop the strings biting through it, and the softwood bit had warped towards the neck, so that's part of the problem. Unfortunately the bridge seems to be glued into the slot in the biscuit, so it's going to be a bugger to remove it and fit a new one. And I'll have to be careful not to damage the cone as well, since the biscuit won't come off. That was obviously making the problem worse, but even so, 1mm of warp wouldn't explain the problem.

After that, I put the cone and the two E-strings back on and tried messing about to find where the intonation sounded about right. Basically, it's way out! The bottom E wasn't properly in tune with itself until the bridge was at about 40 degrees to the string angle. The top E wasn't so severe, but it still needed to be quite a ways further back. There didn't seem to be any tendency for the cone to twist when the bridge was at an angle (as per Spaw's advice) so that's one less worry. But the string slots in the bridge are naturally cut perpendicular to the bridge, so you'd need to get a new "uncut" bridge and file your own slots to compensate the bridge.

It's not impossible to cut another slot in the biscuit and move the bridge backwards, but this will give an uneven pressure on the cone. Any suggestions on whether this is a good idea? Alternatively, if I can measure up the difference accurately then maybe removing the neck and shimming it out would be a better solution, given that the neck is only bolted onto the body anyway on metal guitars?

I have a feeling that the better first step to take is to talk to Elderly about the problem though, before I start any major alterations of an instrument under warranty! :-)

Graham.