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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

But an expensive con
viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=47242

Yeah I found it interesting, but the concept way WAY over my head.

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

What he's playing tends to cover up a lot of ills, in my opinion.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

David Collins addressed this in his video on temperament. The fellow doing the demo here doesn't know what he's talking about, and apparently can't hear that the examples he plays are badly out of tune. In theory, this sort of fret work could sweeten up the most common chords in a few keys, while making everything else much worse than it already is. If equal temperament offends your ear, you need to learn to bend strings, or play slide.

Yeah, it's interesting to see/hear the perspective of an enamored disciple of the system. I would say that although the system brings benefits to some areas, it inarguably comes at a cost of equal and opposite consequences in others. The trick is to place the consequences in an area the player would never use, which of course is entirely dependent on who's playing it.

The demonstrator's review is clearly (but I'm sure not consciously) swayed by his belief and enthusiasm. Through the video there are several points where intervals not positively changed by this system are perceived as such, and showcased as improved. Others which are negatively affected are brushed past with extreme brevity, or obscured by use of the ever faithful balm we use to mask disharmony - vibrato.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

I think the system in the Gore/Gilet books is likely a lot more practical.

Who will build (or has built) a guitar with Auto Tune built in? When all the singers use it can the guitarists be far behind? Why fool with the frets when you can perfect the pitch electronically?

Indeed auto tune has been available for guitar for a little while now http://www.autotuneforguitar.com/

The most interesting equal temperament method I've seen was presented by Gary Magliari and Don MacRostie at the 2011 GAL convention. It's also published in AL http://www.luth.org/back_issue/al113-116/al116.html

Gary uses a detailed model of pitch change due to pressing the strings down at each fret. Compensation is applied at both bridge and nut (like Gore/Gillet) but also mathematical optimization cycles are used to make tweaks to the scale lengths of each string and placement of each fret.

It's an intriguing method which I'm excited to try out.

That is true with some other temperaments like mean tone but the guitar shown in the video appears to be equal tempered. Lutenists have been messing about with mean tone and it works well provided you stay in certain keys. Equal temperament yields intrinsically sharp thirds and flat fifths and mean tone tries to address that. Equal temperament on guitar is made worse by the different sizes, weights and tensions of individual strings. The staggered frets shown in the video and compensating the bridge and the nut do the same thing. Dude in the video is playing a guitar with a locking nut so the only way to simulate compensating the nut is to stagger the frets. Think about what happens as you make the string shorter or longer by removing material from the nut end of the fretboard and scooping the nut back from the end of the fretboard to lengthen the distance from the nut to the first. Basically you are sliding an equal tempered scale back and forth to account for the inaccuracies inherent in each string.
All that being said I think Dude could have done a much better job showcasing the invention with a cleaner setting on his amp or using an acoustic guitar.

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Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large

I know I would sure charge a lot more to crown those suckers!

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It will probably be alright.

I does sound good to my old ears! But if you bend the strings around the big offsets instead of using the whammy bar then watch out.

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

No, Anders Thidell does some hand waving about this, but "True Temperament" is not the same as equal temperament. From the True Temperament website:

"Cromatic offsets in cents from equal temperament as follows:
E -2, F 0, F” -4, G +4, G” -4, A 0, Bb -4, B -1, C +2, C”-4, D +2, Eb -4."

There's no reason that a locking nut can't be compensated. Even the benefits of individual string compensation at the nut become negligibly small if a guitar is properly set up. If you want to chase down the final crumbs of intonation errors, you'll have to put away the electric tuner, and learn to hear intervals. The fundamental frequency of a string does not equal its perceived pitch in most musical contexts. That's why piano tuners use their ears.

Generally any temperament system other than equal is trying to get closer to Just, which has major thirds flatter than equal and major 5ths sharper than equal. This gets you notes which are in simple mathematical ratios and general sound more harmonious
So if this "true temperament" system was to be effective, one would expect that the interval between the root note of a chord and the third would be flattened and the root to fifth would be sharpened.

Plug some typical major chords into the TT Cromatic(sic) off sets and you get

E E G B 3rd -2 5th -1
A A C# E -4 -2
B B D#F# -3 -2
Bf Bf D F +6 0
F F A C +4 +6

This does not look like an improvement to me

Sound's great to my deaf ears!

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

[quote="Joe Beaver"]I does sound good to my old ears! But if you bend the strings around the big offsets instead of using the whammy bar then watch out.[/quote

Good point. And, those TT frets are just plain ugly.

If someone made a guitar that sounded great with G chords, and not so great for E flat, that would be just fine for most players. I figured out a while back, by accident, that trying to get the G-B third into perfect tune, will mess up everything else.

It's always fun for those of us who routinely go from E flat to G to F to D to whatever

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I just think it sounds like crap.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."