Jonbouy

I plan to avoid situations like that, but curious if there is an absolute quantifiable "sweetened" tuning or a case of fine tuning until it just sounds right?

Grant

There is no doubt that this a really good tuner, packed with useful features.

The 'sweetners' would be a thing of taste as there is no preset 'sweetner' for a fretted instrument.

The octave will always occur at the mid-point of a sting, there iis no getting around that simple fact.  As you know you have to adjust the bridge to get that mid-point to occur exactly at the 12th fret.

Of course that position will slightly alter using different gauge strings, prefer a higher action and to some extent because of the arching of the neck so you have to adjust the intonation after changing one of those types of setups.

Although guitars are built to very fine tolerances there will be differences introduced by slight variances in the fret spacings, fret wear which will cause the string to make contact with the fret in a slightly different position for example.  Again the choice of action you prefer will also make slight differences as there is a certain amount of tension added by fingering against a fret vs an open string.

You already know all of this.

No sweetner is going to take all these tiny variances into account in a meaningful and repeatable way on a per instrument basis.

Sweetning could work if say there was a way of a guitar that has already been adjusted for intonation well and tuned, if it then measured the discrepancy between 5 and 17th, 7 and 19th, 3rd and 15th frets It could then caculate an average offset for the entire string length down the fingerboard giving you the best compromise to get perfect pitch all the way down (error diffusion).  That's not what is happening here, you choose a preset for GTR  which likely takes a best guess at that idea from a 'standard' guitar as if there is such a thing.

IMO, sweetning is best done when you choose a guitar and it 'sings' to you when you play it.

As I said it's a fantastic tuner with great features even if you take the 'sweetning' thing as a novelty sideshow which IMO and for the reasons given on this thread, it is.  Of course there are some that will swear by this feature and on the odd 'typical' guitar (if there is such a thing!), it will nail it.

Conclusion: A great tuner even without the marketing magik of the sweetening idea.

Thanks for connecting the dots for me brother, you always have a way of cutting through the BS and your word is gold to me on such matters.

Hope you enjoy  

.

I think the impression I have gotten from players and producers is that the benefits can be appreciable if you are focusing the interest to some pertinent song key and playing position for some particular part of a song.

It may not be practical for live or stage playing but it sure seems attractive for recording, especially if you do a lot of over dub style multi tracking and can take the time to prepare for each part.

This is why I mentioned the notion of changing Concert pitch and/or using alternative tuning schemes.  You'll get some real tangible mileage out of that, especially having access to a tool that can get everyone singing out of the same hymn book so to speak in a matter of minutes.  Take that FWIW from yet another player and producer.

You'll intuitively learn how to get your particular guitar singing sweetly if you don't rely on something that is telling you it is, when in actuality it can't. It can only mitigate deviations across the full length of the fret board.  Whether that causes an 'improvement' to your ears you will have to call that yourself.

Jonbouy


..... And yes it is perfectly feasible that a deviation from a reference tuning will benfit certain keys and chord shapes, but at the detriment of others....

That is exactly why I have never bothered with sweetened tunings. If I were playing a song that only had an E major chord (first position) in it, then raising the pitch of the third string a few cents would give me a sweeter sounding E chord, because the third would fit better into the natural harmonic structure where the third is closer to the fourth than equal temperament allows. Guitarists have known for a long time that playing the third in a distorted major chord introduces dissonance, and the reason is the third is always a little flat when using equal temperament.


So, by raising the pitch of the third string a tad I get a nicer sounding open E chord. But if I play an A Major chord that same string now gives me a sharp root note, and a sharp octave between the open A and third string second fret. If I play a D Major chord I now have a sharp sounding fifth in the chord. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak.

.

jsaras


I just want a "Wild Thing" preset! I've tried for years to get my guitar tuned that way :-@

Use this one....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fa4HUiFJ6c

mike_mccue


What fairy dust romanticism?

There has been some jousting at windmills in this thread.

:-S

It might have been something to do with thinking that this tuner may be more accurate in terms of precision than any other current one that's working well these days (do some comparitive tests and decide for yourself, don't forget to post the results), if you find one less accurate it is either broken or doesn't do such a good job at filtering out background resonances/frequencies. Then you went on persisting in thinking, due to the Nashville cats, players and producers you kept putting forward that there is some magick involved in slighty detuning from a reference frequency on an instrument which likely has some of it's own individual anomolies especially when played by a particular individual, by use of a preset.  (again post the results, it will be more illuminating than any 'me too' assurance from another user as far as seeing what is actually happening goes).  I know you are usually a stickler for test results from others. 

That may have led someone to thinking you may have lost the plot a little.  More than any windmill jousting, whatever that is.  If it is what I think it is it has for a long time been a feature and preserve of your very own forum communication style.  Maybe someone knocked you off your horse on this occassion?  All you need do is come up with the data, IOW apply the same rules to your own conduct as you expect from others.

I'd say the Peterson tool is a particularly good one because it has so many practical and useful features and people seem to enjoy it in use.

So where's my yellow helpful banner thingy?  I went to a lot of trouble here specifically for you and all I got in return was being rudely told I was being full of myself.