True Temperament Guitar Necks. Whaddya folks think?

[Jabberwocky]

www.truetemperament.com .

Boon or just another way to waste GAS money?

Discuss. Please.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

If I took that to my local guitar technician, he would bitch slap me.

[cjm]

The thing that strikes me about most intonation "break throughs" is that they are marketed for and by people who play "power chords" on guitars that don't stay in tune because they're strung with angel hair pasta and that it wouldn't matter if they were in tune anyway because they're so loud.

And some guy who can actually play -- like a Howard Alden or a Jimmy Bruno -- some how makes do with the "inferior" tempering system used by Gibson, Epiphone, D'Angelico, etc., back in the day, and Benedetto, Trenier, Foster, etc., today.

Just sayin'...

[oldane]

it may work - in one key. All the other keys will be way off. If you intend to stay in one and only one keay, it's fine. But for say a Jerome Kern tune like "All the Things You are" or "The Sing is You" which goes through a number of transpositions, it won't work.

It's not a new invention. The guitar neck below is from an older guitar exhibited at the Museum of Musical Instruments in Berlin. If you compare it with the one in the OPs link, you will notice that the compensation is much different - likely meant for another key.

[hans halmackenreuter]

Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles

If I took that to my local guitar technician, he would bitch slap me.

[oldane]

From the ad:

"This sensational guitar features a True Temperament Formula 1 neck and an Evertune bridge, making it the first production guitar in the world with 100% perfect intonation and a guitar that never goes out of tune!!!!"

If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

[RAQ]

There are arguments in favour of avoiding Equal Temperament, but I've never really understood them. Doesn't this mean you can't play it with keyboards and other fretted instruments though?

[fws6]

I want one of those - but it has to have fanned frets ...

[sdr]

I saw a brief write up on these in Guitar Player a couple years ago. They claimed to hear a surprisingly noticeable difference. Still, it seems to me that it appeals more to mathematicians than to guitar players. What happens if you bend a note?

[cjm]

Recrowning and leveling frets on these should be fun.

[RonD]

If my calculations are correct, that's 132 frets, albeit little ones. Does that mean a fret dress would cost 6 times the normal price?

[FatJeff]

I saw David Tanenbaum play one of these at a concert in Denver a few years ago. I hated the way it sounded. It just sounded out of tune.

[Kojo27]

Originally Posted by RAQ

There are arguments in favour of avoiding Equal Temperament, but I've never really understood them. Doesn't this mean you can't play it with keyboards and other fretted instruments though?

On their website, they talk about this problem as actually being a good thing - ahem. Everybody knows that the reason a choir sounds so huge is that human beings can't sing exactly on pitch... there are maybe dozens of people singing "at" the same note, but maybe not one is exactly on it. So what we hear is a huge attempt to blend. If everybody sang exactly the same pitch frequency, it would be loud, but maybe no "bigger" than a trumpet. This is true.

So they say that the discrepancies inevitably caused by bringing your true temperament guitar into a band of normal instruments will really just make everything sound bigger. A "chorusing effect" they call it.

[FatJeff]

Or you could save yourself several thousands of dollars and just tune your guitar badly. Voila - chorusing!

[Billnc]

I firmly believe that since we all do not play instruments that intonate perfectly it is the biggest snake oil on the market. This applies to all instruments I know of except keyboards, and I know they put different systems in electronic keyboards (I was so disinterested I never tried any of them). Listen!
I've played fretless bass with two good slide guitar players at the same time. It was never a nightmare. I've also heard players that no matter how expensive and well set up the instrument, could not play in tune.

[Kojo27]

Originally Posted by FatJeff

Or you could save yourself several thousands of dollars and just tune your guitar badly. Voila - chorusing!

Haha - yep. And also on their website they ADMIT that this spaghetti neck thing is rigged in favor of the most-used "guitar keys" -- at the expense of keys not often used!!! So they've robbed Peter to pay Paul -- big deal!!! That's no big thing! Play Giant Steps or Have You Met Miss Jones (how many keys in that one? F, Bb, D, Gb, G -- at least? If "F#" is one of the not-often-used keys, we're f.ed, because it's also Gb. And even music that favors G, C, D, A, and E, there's this thing - a CAPO? These musical styles use all the keys, just like jazz.

I don't want one. Buzz Feiten was better than this.

kj

[fumblefingers]

Originally Posted by FatJeff

I saw David Tanenbaum play one of these at a concert in Denver a few years ago. I hated the way it sounded. It just sounded out of tune.

he should play his Byers then. his guitars sound great.

most classical guitar concerts involve some level of audience patience dduring a few pieces until the instrument gets reasonably in tune. nylon stringed guitars need intonation improvements much more drastically than steel stringed ones.

i like the idea of a compensated nut and bridge, but its a big hassle for most.

[fep]

Originally Posted by Kojo27

If everybody sang exactly the same pitch frequency, it would be loud, but maybe no "bigger" than a trumpet. This is true.

Does writing "This is true" make any more reliable?

Seriously? No bigger than one trumpet?

What about differences in timbre, and timing?

How do you account for the big sound you get when you copy a guitar track to another track, time shift 5ms and/or eq it a bit differently and/or apply different effects to it? Or even just recording the same take with two different mics and mic placements?

[cjm]

Originally Posted by fep

Does writing "This is true" make any more reliable?

Seriously? No bigger than one trumpet?

What about differences in timbre, and timing?

How do you account for the big sound you get when you copy a guitar track to another track, time shift 5ms and/or eq it a bit differently and/or apply different effects to it? Or even just recording the same take with two different mics?

Timing is pitch. Pitch is frequency.

For example: Two microphones cannot occupy the same space. Sound waves will arrive at different times. The result is a slightly out of phase audio signal.

A change of phase is effectively a change in frequency. And each of the things you mentioned will cause this.

[fep]

Originally Posted by cjm

Timing is pitch. Pitch is frequency.

For example: Two microphones cannot occupy the same space. Sound waves will arrive at different times. The result is a slightly out of phase audio signal.

A change of phase is effectively a change in frequency. And each of the things you mentioned will cause this.

How is that relevant to the discussion?

Each track in my example is producing the same pitch.

We are after all talking about a choir. Even if they hypothetically each sing the same pitch, they can't occupy the same space, they can't sing with the exact same timing, they can't sing with the exact same timbre.

[cjm]

Originally Posted by fep

How is that relevant to the discussion?

Each track in my example is producing the same pitch.

Really? That's odd.

[Kojo27]

Originally Posted by fep

Does writing "This is true" make any more reliable?

Seriously? No bigger than one trumpet?

What about differences in timbre, and timing?

How do you account for the big sound you get when you copy a guitar track to another track, time shift 5ms and/or eq it a bit differently and/or apply different effects to it? Or even just recording the same take with two different mics and mic placements?

Hey - sorry I'm late in finding this post.

You're right, Frank - I was exaggerating, not trying to be literal... Perhaps I should have written, "This is true, in part anyway, or so I've read and been told." My saying, "This is true," makes it no more reliable than I am reliable as an expert, and I'm certainly not that.

I've read a lot in my life: books, mags, Internet, you name it. And it does seem common, to me, for someone who's obviously expressing an opinion, to "opine" such things as "this is true," "there's no doubt about it," "this is unquestioned," etc. Implied, by the nature of the writing (op ed, debate, essay, forum post, etc.) is "in my opinion." Readers should KNOW it's the writer's opinion. One would otherwise have to qualify or footnote every single statement one makes. In my opinion.

Of course it wouldn't sound like one trumpet. I'm embarrassed that I wrote that. The thing with the wiggly-fretted guitar (subject of the thread) is pitch. But of course you're correct: pitch isn't the only factor in the big sound of a choir. Two or more sounds, close but not quite the same, in almost any way, are going to sound much bigger than they would if they were exactly the same. That's all I meant; so why didn't I say that? Beats me! I was just going for a general point, I guess? I wasn't writing for a scientific journal. Still I should be as accurate as possible, so apologies to any offended sensibilities. I'll try to do better next time.

kj

[Kojo27]

Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Buzz Feiten Tuning System.

Umm....

Originally Posted by Kojo27

Haha - yep. And also on their website they ADMIT that this spaghetti neck thing is rigged in favor of the most-used "guitar keys" -- at the expense of keys not often used!!! So they've robbed Peter to pay Paul -- big deal!!! That's no big thing! Play Giant Steps or Have You Met Miss Jones (how many keys in that one? F, Bb, D, Gb, G -- at least? If "F#" is one of the not-often-used keys, we're f.ed, because it's also Gb. And even music that favors G, C, D, A, and E, there's this thing - a CAPO? These musical styles use all the keys, just like jazz.

I don't want one. Buzz Feiten was better than this.

kj

[fumblefingers]

cool. now we're having a pissing contest about pitch.


oh Kevin, where art thou in our hour of need?

[fep]

Me too KJ, my post was an over reaction. I took it too literally, and it was a hijack also. So my apologies. I'll blame it on the meds, yeah that's it, it was the meds.

[zonedout245]

I think it's a good attempt, but for me part of the guitar's charm are its "flaws". The fact that notes at different positions on the neck have slightly different pitch and timbre is what appeals to me, and what many of us have become accustomed to. Personally, I was getting a headache listening to the video examples, shred-babble aside, because the pitches were slightly off by just enough to make the intervals sound funny.

It's not for me, but I'm sure it has its market.

[Kojo27]

Originally Posted by fep

Me too KJ, my post was an over reaction. I took it too literally, and it was a hijack also. So my apologies. I'll blame it on the meds, yeah that's it, it was the meds.

Oh RIGHT!!! I forgot - the meds! Damn the meds! If people but knew the profusion of human fu*kups and follies brought about by these little vials of evil!