Official Luthiers Forum!

Yep...

Talking about perfecting compensation and tunings and all the rest on our fretted instruments is an interesting discussion... especially when playing in a group...

Say you manage to somehow end up with a perfectly pitched guitar.. Every note is "Perfect"... The "Singularity".... and it sings the choirs of angel's voices... Play out with your buddies and *You* are the one whose not playing in tune with them.... Who is out of tune? You or them? The only thing you could do with such a beast is to sell it to a recording studio - because you couldn't ever play it in a group... It would sound funky...

Same for playing in a particular key... Tune it up so it sounds right in that key.... and it sounds all crazy in another key.... Can't win.

The only thing to do is to pull out all the frets and get a bow... Then, you can play each note exactly right!

Thanks

I recently heard Neil Young interviewed and he was asked about the number of takes he does in a studio. He said that he rarely does more than one or two takes. His explanation was that more takes would give you technical perfection but in the process you would lose the soul of the music. Trying to perfectly tune a guitar might be like that. I listened to an early Bob Dylan version of Maggie's Farm. Guitar was terribly out of tune, but Bob sure was having a ball singing that song. he may have had some herbal enhancement, but that song had soul.

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Under Compensated Nut!

IMHO, equal temperment is not perfect but quite practical for a guitar or a piano. A relatively sensitive-topped guitar will have some notes that are always off, even if equal temperment is the goal. Using a precise tuner to tune all six strings by their first harmonics is an easy compromise. Btw, If your tuner has "Hz" mode like KORG DT-3, use it.

I'm a fan of electronic tuners. In my experience, when people's instruments are out of tune after tuning with an electronic tuner it's because the person was too lazy to get the needle to exactly zero.

As many of you know, I build and play banduras which have an individual string for each note. Before we had digital tuners it was borderline impossible to tune a bandura so it actually sounds "in tune". I imagine it was similar for harpists as well (what do they say, something like a harpist spends half their life tuning and the other half playing out of tune). I have found though that for the instrument to sound best, it does need a little bit of stretch on the very highest and lowest strings.

When I tune for a performance now a days I'll tune the instrument from bottom to top with a digital tuner and then re-tune the top and bottom octaves by playing octaves to pull the top a little sharp and the basses a little flat. If I recall, it was around 5 cents at the highest and lowest strings so not very much at all.

Although I love the sound of just intonation, I think that equal temperament is a pretty good compromise. I like chromatic music (especially on piano) and it would sound like crap if we didn't use ET.

Here's an interesting FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Van_Halen#Tuning

So, having said all that, I've never tuned more than a single guitar string with an electronic tuner. I always just get the E tuned up and go by ear from there either by 4ths or by the unison harmonics (which work better than 4ths). I then "correct" the tuning as necessary.

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http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

Andy, that is too funny about harp players!!

Doesn't that happen to everybody?

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Obviously happens to those who are dancing the polka!

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

I 1st started using electronic tuners many years ago when I was playing guitar in a Basie style big band; just TRY to tune a guitar by ear in a band room full of horn players, drummers, piano players etc warming up!! Or in a noisy restaurant or club for that matter.
OTOH, at home I use a tuner to establish concert pitch (440 A) and tune the the guitar to itself by ear- with acoustic instruments of course. With electrics, who cares?
I think if you tune by ear (assuming you're good at it) you get the guitar to play the way it sounds best to you; but at a gig it's just (usually) more practical to use a tuner- it's way easier, takes less time and is "close enough for..." (fill in the blank)
regards
pvg