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Hello my dear forum friends,
I have been reading a lot about tuning lately, everything from nuts to saddles to scales to Gore/Gillet to.......
I came across this video of J.T. explaining his tuning method.
Mind=Blown

Could someone please explain this to me?
Is this in conjunction with Olson's designs?
My mathematics were just thrown out the window.

Please advise.
Hans

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2xnXArjPts

Take it from old blues players. They always tuned flat.

If you watch JT's lesson videos, you'll notice some peculiaritis in his playing. He "pops" the strings quite hard with his fingers, and really snaps the strings HARD with the SIDE of his thumb, which is why he has to constantly repair torn nails.

To really understand WHY he does what he does, you have to observe how a string vibrates when plucked. Hook your guitar up to a tuner if you have a pickup, r if you don't just turn it on. Pluck the string hard and observe the pitch motion. It will start off SHARP, for a few seconds on a string tuned to pitch, longer for slack tuned strings. Then it will move to being AT PITCH, then it may or may not go flat, but slack strings usually will.

JT falls into the "hard picker" category, even though he's using his fingers.

What he's done is tuned his strings to pitch, plucked them hard, observed how sharp each string goes on his tuner in cents, and tunes his strings FLAT by that amount as a pitch offset to compensate for his playing technique.

It won't work for everybody, you have to either play exactly like JT which I don't recommend, or lse calculate your own offsets by the above technique.

However, I would recommend learning to play your guitar in a manner consistent with even string vibration so that the intonation remains constant, like Shaun Hopper does. If you listen closely to JT's playing on those videos, the fast chords sound pretty good, until he holds one out, then the intonation falls off pretty quickly. It's a part of his sound.

It has NOTHING to do with any peculiarity of Olson's construction.

I've worked on several Olson's and haven't had intonation problems with any of them requiring pitch offsets, that's strictly a peculiarity of JT's playing style.

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So anyone know what tuner he is using? It appears to be on laptop

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

I think its a normal tuner thats being filmed and streamed live onto the screen so you can see it...

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Some people shorten the distance from the nut to the first fret slightly. Wouldn't this allow you to tune open strings to pitch rather than flat?