Hello. I haven’t written anything for sometime now. I am still alive. A tad busy with work and some stuff which seemed to take away my mind from work. I don’t know how to fix some things. I have decided to stop trying.
Every guitarist knows what a pain the instrument is when it comes to perfect tune. Due to its harmonic structure, various chord shapes always end up sounding quite a bit out of tune and annoying even when the instrument itself is carefully tuned. “Strange” sounding.. annoying. A few guitarists these days use the Buzz Feiten tuning system, which involves adjusting the nut a few thousandths of an inch closer to the bridge and then tuning the guitar with pitch offsets, usually a few cents +/- from the standard pitch. It requires a special tuner like models from Korg which allow setting offsets, or you tune relatively i.e., tune the E string, then tune the E on the B string, then tune the E on the G string and so on. This “mod” is very expensive to install on the guitar, and there is no guarantee that a luthier will even do it properly. It is patented and everyone regards it as such a closely guarded secret that I couldn’t find any resources on how this thing worked. This was getting stupid, cause the mod is really basic physics, with the string tension and resultant frequency of the string’s vibration. There is just *one* shop in all of UK, and two shops in all of Europe which are “certified” to perform this mod, and there are no guarantees the guitar would actually sound better. Since this is a patented method, they would have submitted the contents of the patent to the USPTO. A quick check there and I came across the entire method described with much detail. I don’t understand what the big deal is if people tell other people how some thing works. It’s not like there are many shops in Europe which do this mod anyway. Looking for other alternatives, I came across Earvana, which changes the shape of the nut itself instead of moving it, changing the resultant open string lengths. This is very good as it doesn’t involve any permanent physical modifications to the instrument. Plus any regular tuner can be used, although the Buzz Feiten tuning offsets may not have anything to do with the distance of the nut from the bridge. I have to check it up.
I also came across Steinberger’s gearless tuners which seem to be cool! Since there aren’t any gears like conventional tuners, they offer a better ratio, and a straight pull and clamp design which means there’s no string winding crap. Whoosh.. how I *wish* I had this stuff when I started learning the instrument! Incredible new advances in every aspect of anything cutting-edge. The other day at CeBIT, there was a person playing a MIDI guitar with a Roland effects processor, and the guitar sounded like a grand piano.. and then it sounded like a flute, and so on as he switched banks.. it was so wonderful. Five years ago, it wouldn’t have sounded even close to real, and there this was… so cool standing there.
Can hear birds chiming outside.
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