Quote:
Originally Posted by charles Tauber
My experience is that very, very few factory-made guitars - steel string or nylon - are adequately intonated to my satisfaction. (Taylor steel strings are a notable exception.)
It's now clear that the issue you are talking about is beyond intonation. I've written about this many times, and I don't know how much of this you already know, so I'll keep this brief.
There are three components to having an instrument "play in tune". The first is the choice of temperament: temperament determines what are the desired pitches. The second in intonation: intonation is the ability of an instrument to accurately achieve the desired pitches. The third is the method used to "tune" the instrument...
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Hey there Charles, thanks for that. It reminded me of some things and I wrote a reply yesterday, but for some reason it's not here. I guess my phone glitched.
I was instantly reminded of when I had the Feiten system installed on an acoustic guitar of mine. The tuning was the critical component that made it work. I wasn't about to go buy a really expensive tuner with the programmed offsets and the luthier said I didn't have to. He said just tuned everything to E. So that meant High E string 1st, 5th fret on B string, 9th fret on G string, 14th fret on D string (which is ridiculous so I used the 2nd fret), 9th fret on the A string and finally the 5th fret harmonic on the low E. I was pretty happy with the Feiten system, although I was hoping for more. Years later I realized that it is one of the most "in tune" guitars I've played.
I agree what you said about Taylor. They have been one of my favorite guitars pretty well for that reason. I get pretty decent tuning all over the fretboard. That's a big thing for me as I like to use open strings to drone and do chord structures well past the 12th fret. I also like complex low register chord structures. So I need good temperament, or perhaps decent temperament is a better word. What Taylor did works. I've heard that Bob Taylor use the basic math for nut placement and then use trial and error to find a good compromise. Like Feiten it's just been moved forward a bit. Just as a note I've never sought to verify this information officially.
This brings me back Feiten. I started trying this tuning method on many guitars and it actually helped a lot when playing in E standard tuning. The only caveat was that I would go back when I was done and tune the B a hair flat. On some guitars I would even tune the low E a hair flat. Of course, if the guitar is poorly intonated at the 12th fret then this really doesn't work very well.
So just the other day when I was playing the nylon string guitar I have I remembered this. I took out my tuner and tuned everything to E. It was pretty good. Then instead of the B string I tuned the G string 5 to 7 cents flat. This gave me pretty good results. I believe tuning the G string that 5 to 7 cents flat has the same effect as moving the nut closer on just that G string. Of course, adjusting the nut would allow the open G to be more in tune than it currently is.
My goal now is to find a guitar that has great tone and playability with reasonable intonation & temperament from the start. Then it would make sense to invest time and money into it to get it more suited for me. The cheap Almansa I have has wonderful intonation. It is sincerely the best I've played in the $2000 CDN under price range. However it's tone is just okay and the string balance is quite lacking and I can't do anything about that. Playability isn't great, I could alter that a little bit. However I got somewhat ruined when I played that Cordoba c10sp that had such amazing tone and playability. I could instantly play twice as fast and sound twice as clean. Then I realize that this is not even a high-end guitar so I'm looking at my wallet!