equal temperment ? intonation ?

[FRANK]

here we go any way i replaced a roller nut with brass and bone using the brass almost like a 0 fret not quite its there to fill remain g space from where the roller was accommodated to equal out the intonation correctly i dial calipered in the brass and the bone to correct specs like this from a space that was .229 i filled .110 with brass and the rest with bone to equal out the difference of the displaced wood from the finger board and place the new nut into proper potion for correct intonation and the resulting factor being that i have perfect intonation at the 12th and good intonation at the 19th but the complaint came from frets 1 and 2 where he said maby i need to lower the strings ? i dont know maby a smig ill cu a bit more ?for action i guess i was told 3 /32eds at the 17th fret for big E and 2 1/2 32eds at the hi e and align the strings to radius with the finger board this is after checking neck nut saddles ? i tried to explain equal temperament in different instruments and found a loss for words go please feel free to enlighten me again please i need to be able to be sure about this nut here look guys

[Tim Mace]

The key words are "always almost".I spend most of time tuning..lol...and don't forget sometimes a defective string can cause you to make adjustments that weren't needed.

[FRANK]

THIS IS TRUE HEY TIM HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN TUNING GUITARS oops i was typing in caps again sorry Frank sigh ... anyways Tim uh thats funny I do this a lot for customers with Floyd Rose and they come in just for strings constantly a father and son they own like 20 Floyd Rose instruments and they refuse to restring and those are nothing but tuning yep when I repair and restring new sets I come with in 1/4 to 1/2 half step either up or down of true 440 by ear also I have a tuning fork to help me and my ear training it it a High e pitch this seams to help but for my clients that like true intonation and true sounds wow I am always under the Gun

[Ned Knepp]

Paul,
In my amateur opinion, true intonation on every string and fret isn't possible unless we drop the equally tempered scale but I don't think it matters to any but a very few people. I think that is why we usually focus on the octaves which apparently gets us close enough for most people. It seems to me that I remember reading that most of the variance between any note on a guitar and the true pitch of that note is around 4 or 5 cents, which I believe is very close to the threshold that most of us are capable of discerning.

I know a lot of pretty good guitar players that can't tune their guitar by ear. I'm of the opinion that the invention of the low priced electronic tuner has contributed a lot to the swelling numbers of people that play. A few of my friends have asked me to help them learn to tune by ear. I've found that the "WA wa" sound of frequency interference appears to be fairly easy for them to hear and, once aware of it, they were able to learn to get fairly close but I also hear what I think of as the "rightness" of the tones as two strings produce one note and it appears that this isn't something that everyone can hear. ( I don't really know, these are just my impressions. )

I guess that what I'm trying to say, in my typically round about manner, is that I don't think very many people know what "true intonation and true sound" really sounds like. I understand how much it can bother someone if they perceive that their guitar is not playing in tune but I doubt that most guitar players can hear if a guitar has
"perfect intonation and perfect pitch" across the fingerboard. What they are hearing is an issue with the setup or just a guitar out of tune. I also think that any guitar player of long standing that can hear the little intonation/pitch issues that are inherent in an equally tempered scale have learned to accept that it's just going to be that way on a guitar so if they complain it would usually be a setup problem.