True Temperament Fret Guitars

[SpiderWars]

I think with individual adjustable saddles at the bridge and a good setup a guitar can play with a fairly sweet tuning to not need any of these. Having the nut properly cut and placed is imperative or you're just chasing your tail.

Some of the 'solutions' such as Buzz Feiten are compromises. If you play a ton of power chords you might not even like BF because it seems (to me) to ever so slightly sour the fifths in order to make other intervals sweeter. Since fifths tend to be so sweet on regular tuned guitars we are drawn to them and play them a lot. The sweetness/sourness affects which intervals we tend to choose. If you then sour those intervals you've trained yourself to use...it fucks with you.

 

[Monkey Man]

How is s fret job done on these?

Not sure, but I remember my buddy invested in a machine that bent the frets perfectly for installation.

Right? How the hell do they even slot the fingerboard for the frets?

Programmed into a router to match the frets.

 

[the rossness]

I played them on a Caparison Applehorn and thought they were super-cool.

 

[panhead]

The b string is the culprit. The guitar no matter what kind has imperfect intonation unlike a piano. Well nothings perfect but close as possible.

 

[panhead]

Buzz F guitars cannot be correctly tuned with a conventional tuner to my knowledge. Never had one but read something about it when they came out decades ago.

 

[SpiderWars]

Buzz F guitars cannot be correctly tuned with a conventional tuner to my knowledge. Never had one but read something about it when they came out decades ago.

I had one and tuned it normally and it was very close. Whenever I tried to tune to the offsets it seemed a tiny bit better but play it hard for 20 minutes and those tiny 'a few cents' would no longer be perfectly tuned where you set them. So it seemed like a bit of a waste to try and tune it perfectly. I did make sure to lean the tuning in the right direction. Basically make sure certain notes are absolutely NOT sharp or flat.

But we've all had guitars that just seem to be very picky about tuning and the slightest variance sounds sour. And others that seem to not care, get it close and it sounds sweet. I think that's usually a nut issue.

 

[psychodave]

The b string is the culprit. The guitar no matter what kind has imperfect intonation unlike a piano. Well nothings perfect but close as possible.

Yeah, I actually tend to tune the B string a little flat for some stuff. Been doing it since the 80's when trying to figure out VH stuff.

With the crazy frets you just need to learn where you can use fret hand vibrato or whammy bar vibrato... not all notes will have the funky fret areas.

 

[Speeddemon]

Buzz F guitars cannot be correctly tuned with a conventional tuner to my knowledge. Never had one but read something about it when they came out decades ago.

I have this old small Korg DT7 tuner, that supports Buzz Feiten tuning as well.

Never played such a guitar though... I probably would think the cure is worse than the disease, but, the imperfect intonations on a guitar do bug me from time to time, especially when playing octaves or when transposing certain chords that sound great with open strings, but not so much anymore around the 9th-11th fret...