Aug 8
John from johnwilliamgordon.com was kind enough to write a lengthy comment in response to my recent post "How to Tune Your Guitar Perfectly (or Damn Near Close to It)". John expertly explains how very poor guitar intonation can make it almost impossible to get your guitar in tune, and he outlines 6 steps for correcting the issues each time you tune your guitar. Just see if this sounds like a problem with your guitar. And if you don’t really know what "intonation" means then this will be a valuable lesson. Here’s John’s comments following a question about why someone would tune each string to the same note (A) over and over again, instead of just tuning each string of the guitar to it’s complimentary note on another guitar or piano:
That’s an oft-used technique. If you can produce an A from another source in order to start the process, it is unnecessary to use the original source for all 6 strings as long as you keep using your newly tuned OPEN A as the source. (Granted, if you use a *fretted* A as the source, your guitar better have perfect intonation or you should use the original source over and over.)Bassist, “Give me an ‘A’.” I give him an A then he tunes the rest of his bass off his own string (really, more often using a tuner). I don’t know anyone who keeps asking for the source “A” from another instrument in order to tune each string on a bass or guitar. TUNING FOUNDATION PROBLEM: BAD FRET LAYOUT AND/OR BRIDGE POSITION The real problem tuning 90% of the so-so guitars out there is bad *intonation*: this means either the guitar’s frets were not laid out correctly when manufactured and/or the bridge (or adjustable mini-bridges) under each string is (are) not in the correct position.Most beginners only use the first 5-7 frets and so don’t notice their guitars’ bad intonation, though it’s often there. This is my biggest complaint about cheap guitars and it makes tuning them a maddening compromise.You can tune cheap guitars’ OPEN strings perfectly but FRETTED pitches won’t be in tune, and are worse and worse the further you travel from a fretted note that’s in tune.An OPEN string’s note should be the same as that string’s FRETTED note at the 12th fret (the octave). You can adjust the mini-bridges under each string on an electric guitar to make this so, but even then you’ll still have problems with intonation on the other frets if they’re laid out incorrectly.And on top of that, setting intonation is more difficult for a string with high action: the difference between its OPEN tension pitch and its FRETTED tension will be great enough to screw up intonation when such a string is fretted on a high note because the string’s action is higher on higher frets and therefore has to be pushed further down to reach the fret (e.g., fret 22, high D on the E string) and more tension is used to push the string further down making it sharper. Thus, my low E’s intonation is compromised to ameliorate this but above the 15 fret (G) the fretted notes get super sharp as I push down the big fatty E.This problem is more acute with heavy gauge strings since they’re tighter and the increase in tension when pressing them to the fret board is greater than the increase in tension when doing the same thing with lighter gauge strings.It’s mainly a problem with my low .046 E since the A is a .036 and the D is a .32 (a weird set). I set the low E’s intonation so it’s a red hair flat on frets 0-8 (about), then (hopefully) compensate by pressing a little harder on those lower frets. I do this in order for the low E to have some semblance of sounding in tune on frets 15-22 (G-D). If I ever have a custom guitar built I’ll address this with the maker.By the way, the harder you press down on a string with juicy frets, the more you bend that string, making its pitch higher. Try it with a tuner and you’ll see pressing hard in lower frets can sharpen a string almost a 1/4 tone on some guitars (e.g., my ES-446).COMPROMISE: You’ll either have to lower the action to reduce the extreme tension difference OR, most likely, you’ll have to COMPROMISE the tuning of that string: if you often play that string high on the fret board, you may have to set its intonation by first matching its OPEN pitch to its 12th fret pitch (by moving the mini-bridge under that string) then move the mini-bridge again to sacrifice a TINY bit of the 12th-fret’s pitch (lower or higher) to achieve better intonation on the part of the fret board you need most.Once the OPEN pitch is tuned, only adjust the bridge for the fretted pitches, frequently retuning the OPEN pitch since even a slight change in bridge position will tighten or loosen the string, making the open note sharp or flat. If you have a single bridge common on acoustic guitars, you’ll either have to buy a better guitar with better intonation or not play up really high, which is the case with 90% of acoustic playing anyway. Messing with a single bridge is a nightmare, but the overall concept should be the same (I mean “should” because I haven’t done it on a single-piece bridge and I don’t want to). SUM for setting intonation: (every time you change strings)
- Use a tuner (unless you have perfect pitch).
- Tune all the OPEN strings so the neck tension is normal (in its final position).
- Then tune one OPEN string again.
- Next, use the tuner to check that string’s pitch at the 12th fret, but only move the BRIDGE to adjust the 12th-fret’s pitch (don’t use the guitar’s twisty tuner). Check the open pitch again with the tuner. Repeat 3-4 as many times as necessary on the same string since messing with the bridge will change the OPEN pitch, too.
- Next, GENTLY press the string to OTHER frets to test pitches on the SAME string using the TUNER. This is where you’ll find out if your guitar’s intonation sucks. If the other fretted notes are out of tune yet the Open and 12th-fret pitches are in tune, your guitar’s fret layout probably sucks. 6) Compromise if necessary by slightly sacrificing perfect intonation on one part of the fret board for another section you use more (e.g., low E’s priority: frets 1-7).
A very helpful process regarding tuning and intonation is to record yourself and your band digitally then use the killer mac/windows app “Transcribe” to see how much you over-grip or unwittingly sideways-bend strings, making them sharp. Click the mouse on any part of the wave in transcribe and it’ll show you how many hundredths (cents) that pitch is sharp or flat. You can also evaluate your bassist’s and other instruments intonation on a recording and ID the cause of any sourness. NOTE: a flat bass won’t sound out of tune so much as make the higher-pitch instrument (the guitar) sound sharp even when guitar’s in tune! I’m working on my intonation and have found I actually prefer a little sour offness in many cases (not on unison melodies). I decided this in the studio and decided to use the take with a more bendy, slightly-off sound than the near-perfect intonated take that sounded a square to me. Nonetheless, I still need to work on my intonation. And regardless, you can still make beautiful music on a severely out-of-tune guitar!
Thank you John, that was very helpful. One of the the things I like about the a-harmonic tuning is that tuning all the strings to the harmonic instead of the fretted A-note in my experiments actually helps overcome some of the poor intonation.Comparing the traditional tuning method with the a-harmonic method I find that the I have more notes in tune up and down the neck with the a-harmonic method. While I don’t understand the math or physics behind this well enough to explain why, I just tried it with an electric guitar before writing this post, and sure enough that was the case.Take a quick minute to check out John’s own innovative band site johnwilliamgordon.com.
