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The other day I was working on my guitar (Line 6 Variax JTV-89) that had some intonation issues. I noticed that I couldn't move the saddles in a position that would be satisfying (I was at the minimum position available on some saddles), but as the bridge can be moved, I used the screws to move the "high e" side a bit closer to the pickup.

So now my bridge is not parallel to the frets but has a slight angle (not much). Will this be a problem ? Can anything be damaged (neck, bridge, ...) ?

Here's an example of what a JTV-89 bridge looks like (this is not a JTV-89 but the bridge is the same). There are small horizontal screws that you can see on the left and right, near the vertical bridge height screws. So mine is slightly angled, the right part being closer to the pickup that the left part.

enter image description here

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It shouldn't damage anything. However, it will make the strings slightly closer together and it may cause additional wear at the point the string goes over the saddle, since you are now causing a slight sideways angle. If you go through a few sets of strings and aren't breaking an unreasonable amount of strings because of it, you should be fine. A tiny drop of high grade grease will usually fix any break problems from something like this.

I had an Ibanez tele that I would have loved to be able to adjust the bridge this way. My low E string saddle needed to be probably half a centimeter farther back then I could put it to have proper intonation.

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I doubt if you've turned the bridge by even one degree, so it won't hurt anything. On some guitars, the individual saddle can be unthreaded and turned through 180 degrees, to give more adjustment back or forth for intonating.Particularly those with triangular shaped saddles.Is it not possible to move the whole bridge assembly forward so that it is parallel again, then adjust all saddles back?

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  • No, because on my guitar, to have a correct intonation the left saddle needs to be at minimum and the right one needs to be at maximum :). So if I move the bridge to be parallel again, the intonation will be incorrect for one of the E strings.
    – Julien N
    Apr 8, 2013 at 10:48
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No, in fact it's a fairly common adjustment to make for bridges that do not individual saddle height adjustments.

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