Taylor tuning ....

Fretwired

Not heard of this before ....

Stuckfast

Christ, who edited the speech? It's almost unwatchable.

Not sure what I think of the principle. Like all of these things it seems to sound better on some chords and worse on others.

UnclePsychosis

Not much in it. If anything, standard sounds better to me 

richardhomer

I've always tuned to the 'attack' of the note - on the basis that when the string is vibrating the most, it may well be slightly sharper (I originally came across this suggestion in the Erlewine Guide to Guitar Repairs book I think).

I've never had problems with sounding 'out'.

ICBM

Yes, I can hear the difference. The one in 'Taylor' tuning sounds out, the one in standard tuning sounds right.

To me a guitar sounds most in tune when it's set up with the nut as low as possible, the neck as straight as possible (allowing a tiny bit of relief usually) and intonated and tuned perfectly to the equal-temperament intervals. If you think about the mathematics and physics of it, there's a good reason for this...

sev112

What'd quite interesting is if I play Fire and Rain, the Taylor tuning works better - funny that

olafgarten

The problem is that Guitars can never have perfect intonation with straight frets. Both of these tunings are a compromise but I think standard is a better one. 

ICBM

olafgarten said:

The problem is that Guitars can never have perfect intonation with straight frets.

They can never have perfect intonation in all keys with non-straight frets either. (That includes compensated nuts.)

olafgarten said:

Both of these tunings are a compromise but I think standard is a better one. 

Exactly. The whole point of equal temperament is that the errors are evenly distributed - any attempt to make one key sound more in tune automatically makes others worse, by definition. Which for some guitarists isn't an issue, I know - if you don't play in those keys.