Tuning Aaarrrrggghhh!!!!

impmann

Just play it... and if its out of tune just call it Jazz.

Simples

Phil_aka_Pip

Equal Temperament caught me out, many years ago. I knew someone who had an old electronic organ, with 12 oscillators, one for each semitone. I guess the octave above or below the oscillators' frequencies were obtained by manipulating the output analog-wise, perhaps @ICBM would know how that could be done. The electronics were valves, and frequencies drifted with time & temperature. I think you adjusted the frequency of each oscillator by screwing the core of an inductor in or out slightly, I don't think it was a pot. Anyway I agreed to tune it.

Oh this is easy, I thought. I tuned G a perfect 5th from C, D a perfect fifth from G, A a perfect fifth from D, etc ... then when I got to checking the F against the C, the F was well sharp, it was horrible. Then I remembered about the 4Hz thing, and had to do it all again from scratch. Got it right in the end though.

Samgb

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@Samgb He puts it far better than I could have, worth trying to get your head round it. It makes sense when it 'clicks', trust me

I tried really hard. I think at 38 my brain is like a hard drive - im always having to delete stuff if i want to put anything new in there and i just never can be arsed!

JAYJO

Samgb said:

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@Samgb He puts it far better than I could have, worth trying to get your head round it. It makes sense when it 'clicks', trust me

I tried really hard. I think at 38 my brain is like a hard drive - im always having to delete stuff if i want to put anything new in there and i just never can be arsed!

Dont worry about it gets worse!

viz

Phil_aka_Pip said:

Equal Temperament caught me out, many years ago. I knew someone who had an old electronic organ, with 12 oscillators, one for each semitone. I guess the octave above or below the oscillators' frequencies were obtained by manipulating the output analog-wise, perhaps @ICBM would know how that could be done. The electronics were valves, and frequencies drifted with time & temperature. I think you adjusted the frequency of each oscillator by screwing the core of an inductor in or out slightly, I don't think it was a pot. Anyway I agreed to tune it.

Oh this is easy, I thought. I tuned G a perfect 5th from C, D a perfect fifth from G, A a perfect fifth from D, etc ... then when I got to checking the F against the C, the F was well sharp, it was horrible. Then I remembered about the 4Hz thing, and had to do it all again from scratch. Got it right in the end though.

Wow ........ impressive.

ICBM

On the rare occasions I work on the damn things, I just use a tuner .

But yes, they're done with an oscillator for each note and frequency doublers to create the octaves, giving all the notes.

Sadly it also means they can be expensive to overhaul because there's a *lot* of stuff to do - typically every oscillator will need all the caps replaced and resistor values checked, plus all the key contacts etc cleaned... it can easily add up to more than they're worth. Modern resistors do at least drift less with temperature than the old ones though.

guitarcookie1

Drives me nuts. 

Last night at practice I thought I sounded well out of tune & yet my tuner & band mates thought otherwise  

Sambostar

Is this the same kind of phenomenon as 'My valves aren't warm enough tonight' or 'The atmospheric pressure or room temperature  is affecting the sound...or my ears'  Because I get those problems a lot.  I think, psychosomatically speaking, it is in the same general ballpark as tuning.  Like you are trying to play along to a car stereo driving towards you and past and back again.

I never use a tuner, as depending on the guitar and the frets, it will be out of tune.  I just do a rough tuning on the open strings, sometimes adjusting what seems to be the D, B and high E as I play. 

B string saga, if I get that, which I rarely do, I just put the guitar down.  There is no point fighting it, as you'll never win because it means your subconscious mind is somewhere else, even if you really feel like playing.  I think if I had to use an oscilloscope or tuner I would kill myself.

Phil_aka_Pip

ICBM said:

On the rare occasions I work on the damn things, I just use a tuner .

This would have been 1982, 1983? I didn't have a tuner then, all I had was a tuning fork. tbh I probably wasn't so worried about concert pitch as just getting it in tune with itself.

Hertz32

I think this is where the Buzz Feiten thing is supposed to help, it's a compensated tuning thing, you can't tune to each note frequency though. each of the open notes is slightly sharp or flat to make notes sound OK further up the fingerboard,

http://www.buzzfeiten.com/howitworks/howitworks.htm

imalone

Hertz32 said:

I think this is where the Buzz Feiten thing is supposed to help, it's a compensated tuning thing, you can't tune to each note frequency though. each of the open notes is slightly sharp or flat to make notes sound OK further up the fingerboard,

http://www.buzzfeiten.com/howitworks/howitworks.htm

BF works in pretty much the same way as Earvana. Earvana actually have the correct description for what they're doing on their site http://www.earvana.com/in-depth-1.html which is to basically tweak the open string lengths so the bend you apply to get the string to the fret in the first few frets gets the right note. BFF talk a lot about problems with TET and claim that's what they're doing, but you can't fix them intrinsically on a stringed instrument (because the same note occurs in different places) and don't need to (because the range isn't as great as a piano). Also worth noting that both methods will only really work correctly for a given tuning, because they depend on the relation of the string extension needed to get to pitch (function of tuning) and the string extension needed to reach the fret (fixed for each fret).

GuyBoden

Hertz32 said:

I think this is where the Buzz Feiten thing is supposed to help, it's a compensated tuning thing, you can't tune to each note frequency though. each of the open notes is slightly sharp or flat to make notes sound OK further up the fingerboard,

http://www.buzzfeiten.com/howitworks/howitworks.htm

I've tried them, compensated tuning at the nut will only make playing open strings in tune with each other. It's not the solution.

ICBM

A really well-cut nut does not need compensating. The cause of intonation problems in the low positions is the nut being too high, so you're having to bend the strings down to the frets, and they go sharp by different amounts depending on the gauges… but if the nut is the right height - essentially the same as a fret - then it does not need to be different lengths for each string. If it did, the frets would need to be in different places too or the same problem would occur when you play a barre chord, as GuyBoden said.

The *overall* position of the nut does need to be very slightly further forward than the theoretical mathematical position, because of the way a vibrating string is constrained by the nut groove and plays slightly flat, but that's actually quite consistent across the gauges. PRS, Hamer and many other makers were doing this for years before Buzz Feiten, so his "system" should never have been patentable in the first place… the rest is just a 'sweetened' tuning which should also have been not patentable because players have been doing that sort of thing by ear since the instrument was invented.