tuner to get for setting intonation?

  • Thread starter Thread starter dstroud
  • Start date Start date
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these are pretty cool with a huge screen and all of the tempered tunings like the EVH sweetened one, etc.

Victor Mason of Mojave told me way back when that the Feiten offsets are useful to experiment with even if you don’t have a compensated nut. so i sorta use a hybrid of standard and feiten.

i used to sit with our piano tuner at church when he worked on our steinway concert grand and discuss tempering the piano tuning and how certain performers demand personal idiosyncrasies in the tuning. i.e. requesting certain registers tuned relatively sharper or flatter. what a neat old world art piano tuning is.

the one drawback to the official feiten tuning is that it can clash with other instruments. but by yourself it’s great!
 
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the feiten offsets

left column is the cents offset tuning at the open string and right column is the cents offset fretting at the 12 fret

from here i compensate by ear while fretting chords up and down the neck and checking against standard tuning. slight imperfections in the frets and deviations in the string tensions settling into the trem springs require additional corrections. and still i never feel totally satisfied with tuning!
 
anything around +/- 1 cent is fine. The human ear can't perceive a difference beyond that.
The Peterson units are great and the strobe feature on them is very nice. I've had a couple through the years.
Currently have a TU-3 on one board and the Waza version of that pedal on another and they work fine and are plenty accurate.
 
mentoneman said:
the one drawback to the official feiten tuning is that it can clash with other instruments. but by yourself it’s great!
Click to expand...
About 20-ish years ago I bought a 'new' Heritage 535 that had been sent straight from factory to Joe Glaser in Nashville who had just gotten one of the first PLEK machines. They pulled the frets and gave it a full PLEK/refret and a Buzz Feiten nut. It came with a handwritten piece of paper with those offsets just like that. It seemed to me that complex chords sounded sweeter but at the expense of power chords with just roots and 5ths. The power chords weren't quite as sweet anymore. And when I tried to record with, it clashed with the other guitar.

I usually just tune normally but with the B string a tiny, tiny bit flat or at least never ever sharp.
 
RWTD:

1st string: Eb +17.0 cents
2nd string: Bb +29.0 cents
3rd string: F# +35.0 cents
4th string: C# +35.0 cents
5th string: Ab +35.0 cents
6th string: Eb +29.0 cents


YRGM:

High E: +25.5 cents from Eb
.....B: +23.0 cents from Bb
.....G: +23.0 cents from F#
.....D: +25.5 cents from Db
.....A: +25.5 cents from Ab
-Low E: +23.0 cents from Eb


Hear About It Later:

1st String: -34.0 Cents
2nd String: -34.0 Cents
3rd String: -22.0 Cents
4th String: -22.0 Cents
5th String: -22.0 Cents
6th String: -34.0 Cents (Drop Db Tuning)


Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love :

1st string: Eb +27.7 cents
2nd string: Bb +27.9 cents
3rd string: F# +29.6 cents
4th string: C# +30.0 cents
5th string: Ab +30.0 cents
6th string: Eb +27.7 cents
 
mentoneman said:
View attachment 139789
the feiten offsets

left column is the cents offset tuning at the open string and right column is the cents offset fretting at the 12 fret

from here i compensate by ear while fretting chords up and down the neck and checking against standard tuning. slight imperfections in the frets and deviations in the string tensions settling into the trem springs require additional corrections. and still i never feel totally satisfied with tuning!
Click to expand...
Now that I think about it...those offsets are different than the ones given to me. Mine had the high E at 0/0 and the B string was +1/0.
 
I've been using these offsets for years:

1st - 0.0 cents
2nd - +1.0 cents
3rd - -2.0 cents
4th - -2.0 cents
5th - -2.0 cents
6th - -2.0 cents

or

1st - -2.3 cents
2nd - 0
3rd - 0
4rth - -0.4 cents
5th - -2.1 cents
6th - -1.2 cents
 
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