Accurate tuning

This page gives the best tuning instructions I have seen yet. It may seem strange, at first, but it works!

Yep, been using that tuning scheme on my acoustic with excellent results for the last year or so (or since I read that very same article).

Cool tuning instructions, how about guitar tuners, I would guess that they also produce an even amount of "out of tuneness" after tuning to EADGBE ? It looked like there were elements of that Buzz Feiten tuning system (that Washburn bang on about)in the American Luthers doc . I presume the Buzz Feitin thing is just a Washburn sales pitch (old and cynical Simon !!!!)? I went to the web site after buying a Washburn electric and spent half ah hour looking for a link on the Buzz Feiten page before I realized that was it !

Eha Pythagoras, cum ear, this is your fault !!!!!

Thanks Lordathestrings!

That method really works! I've spent years being hopeless at tuning and now I can see it wasnt my relative pitch so much as bad tuning method. I bought a guitar tuner a while back, now I no longer have a need for it, other than to get the E or Eb to begin with. :)

well.. thatz all real nice, but what good are all those tuning methods if you need a tuningdevice to get the tune where you start off with? Like in this example the tone E.. tuning forks are tuned to A at 440 Hz ... but we need an E.. so we do need a guitartuner.. and if we have a guitartuner.. why should we not use it for the rest of the strings too?

...because the electronic tuner gives absolute pitch to each string instead of tuning the rest of the strings relative to the E strings. Tuning by the described method introduces a set of compromises that makes all of the chord shapes acceptable, while tuning each string with the tuner makes a lot of chords sound wrong. What we need is an electronic tuner that incorperates the small 'inaccuracies' that are needed to produce this compromised tuning.

oh..

..but.. that tuning technique... is it realy more effective than say... tuning the A string to a tuning fork and then the rest with 5th/zero fret tuning? or 12th/7th fret tuning?
with these you are also tuning the strings relative to eachother.. pairwise that is.

I just had a brief discussion of that very thing with my favourite guitar tech, and it seems that even with the compromises introduced by that tuning method, the result is still equal tempered tuning. What the guitar needs is a way to achieve tempered tuning. Pianos can achieve this because each note is produced by a different string, so each one can be tuned to an optimum frequency. A fretted instrument like a guitar has to incorporate some kind of compromise because each string covers at least one octave, and as much as two octaves on a 24-fret guitar. This is further complicated by the differing amounts of tension added by fretting a string at different positions along the neck. The more I dig into this, the more complicated it gets, and the more laughable it seems that here, in the year 2002, we are still stuck with the fret-locating formula proposed by Pythagorus! I may not get through this, but I can see the need to start from scratch, and come up with something that actually works, all the time, every time.

There is a belguim enterprise who has developed a few new cool concepts for a guitar. They use asymetric neck shapes and so called "Smile frets" to accheive buzz free (in all positions) and perfectly in tune ´(also in all positions) string play.

http://www.kritz.com/

Originally posted by Azrael
Like in this example the tone E.. tuning forks are tuned to A at 440 Hz ... but we need an E..

Not to get too far off subject...but you can get Tuning Forks for just about any note you want.