Went to a gig... WTF guitar tuning?

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

The usual Gibson tuning is to set the G just a hair flat when open so your chording sounds closer to right.  However, I'd call that a fret placement issue and not so much a tuning issue.  A lot of guys that know the eb and flow of their own technique will tune similarly.  That is, they tune for their fretted positions rather than open strings.  Case in point, get a guitar's open strings tuned perfect, capo up the neck and strum a chord.  Even the good brands need subtle retuning.  Add the subtle kick in the chest of a well EQ'd kick drum, decay of a crash symbol, a bass player, and another guitar player, and one doesn't notice it so much.  By that 5th Miller High Life, it's the best band you've ever heard, tuning be darned.

 

[Dan025]

I have a close friend that I jam with, and his favorite guitar is an LP. Try as I might I cannot get the thing tuned or to stay in tune when I play it. It's always just not quite right. I can get it close enough, but to my ear it's always a bit off. Strangely enough, when I get one of my Strats back from him the G string is always sharp and B is always flat.

He's got a heavier touch and bends relentlessly while he solos, where I tend not to hit the strings as hard as he does. So it's just my $0.02, but I think alot of tuning issues have to do with how you play.

i always had the problem of instruments sounding out of tune especially when the tuner says it's right and that the intonation is dead on... turns out it's because the musical scale is an imperfect mathematical accident and physics will f@(< with you. that and nut placement and key all play into a good sounding tune/temperment. some players that have an ear for harmony will make minor adjustemnts based on songs. what you describe is just different ears and different styles. now i set intonation by ear with the first fret capo'd haven't had time to make a truely corrected nut for myself yet but i also have been able to accept an out of tune guitar lately rather than obsess over a little dissonance. 

 

[Strat Avenger]

The usual Gibson tuning is to set the G just a hair flat when open so your chording sounds closer to right.  However, I'd call that a fret placement issue and not so much a tuning issue.  A lot of guys that know the eb and flow of their own technique will tune similarly.  That is, they tune for their fretted positions rather than open strings.  Case in point, get a guitar's open strings tuned perfect, capo up the neck and strum a chord.  Even the good brands need subtle retuning.  Add the subtle kick in the chest of a well EQ'd kick drum, decay of a crash symbol, a bass player, and another guitar player, and one doesn't notice it so much.  By that 5th Miller High Life, it's the best band you've ever heard, tuning be darned.

Interesting. I usually tune my G to dead-on, and the B slightly flat. This applies to both the 24-3/4" scale and the 25-1/2" scale guitars.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

The usual Gibson tuning is to set the G just a hair flat when open so your chording sounds closer to right.  However, I'd call that a fret placement issue and not so much a tuning issue.  A lot of guys that know the eb and flow of their own technique will tune similarly.  That is, they tune for their fretted positions rather than open strings.  Case in point, get a guitar's open strings tuned perfect, capo up the neck and strum a chord.  Even the good brands need subtle retuning.  Add the subtle kick in the chest of a well EQ'd kick drum, decay of a crash symbol, a bass player, and another guitar player, and one doesn't notice it so much.  By that 5th Miller High Life, it's the best band you've ever heard, tuning be darned.

Interesting. I usually tune my G to dead-on, and the B slightly flat. This applies to both the 24-3/4" scale and the 25-1/2" scale guitars.

As per usual, it all goes back to ears and playing style.  I'm not cursed with perfect pitch, so tuning and intonation for me is done to what the tuner says.  Sounds good to me.  The objections any observer has ever had with my playing isn't it's in tuneness.

 

[B3Guy]

So . . . what is this "correct" way of stringing a guitar that so few people know about? I don't have any trouble with my Warmoth, but then again I got the nut cut for Ernie Super Slinkies, always put those exact strings on, had my Wilkinson tremolo set up professionally (and those saddles stay locked in position), and I just have basic strat tuners. I've heard cut the string at two posts past the one you're stringing to, stick the string down the hole and wind 'er up nice and neat heading down (towards the headstock).

I'm considering the Planet Waves auto-trim tuners because my friend has some and they just make things so darn easy (that or the Schaller mini locks).

 

[AutoBat]

^^that's the correct way for non-lockers.

with my schaller lockers i pull the string through, loop it around my finger, pick the guitar up with the string, then lock it down.  tune to pitch, clip the excess.

 

[Cagey]

^^that's the correct way for non-lockers.

with my schaller lockers i pull the string through, loop it around my finger, pick the guitar up with the string, then lock it down.  tune to pitch, clip the excess.

You may be going a bit above and beyond the call of duty there, but that's basically how I do the lockers as well. Pull 'em tight, lock 'em down, tune to pitch, and trim the excess. They're good to go until I decide to change strings again.

 

[Ace Flibble]

You've got the locking (pull tight, lock, cut and tune) and Kluson (two posts past, down the hole, bend around, tune) styles right. For other standard tuners, what you do is take the string through the tuner, loop it around the post in the opposite direction to how it turns to tune up and slip it around itelf. When you tune up, the string will trap the end against the post, firmly locking it. Not as quick as locking tuners, of course, or even as quick as Klusons, but it's almost as stable as locking tuners.

The main thing, when it comes to the tuners themselves, isn't so much what style they are or how exactly you lock the string there tightly, it's just whether the peg is stiff or not. A loose peg might shift. The beauty of the Planet Waves tuners is they're as solid as a rock. I've got non-locking Grover and Kluson tuners on guitars with vibrato bridges that never go out of tune, simply because I A) lock the string in at the post properly and B) made sure to buy very stiff-feeling tuners.


And as for tuning, I've never heard of it being a standard thing for Gibsons specifically, but tuning the 3rd string slightly flat certainly is a good idea. Personally, I tune and set the intonation on my guitars by fretted notes (5th, 9th and 15th, specifically) rather than by the open strings and harmonics/12th fret. Makes a helluva lot more sense to me to make sure the frets you play most commonly on are the ones that sound most accurate.

 

[jrfox92]

I'll admit, I've never attempted to do any string locking, or any special thing to keep my guitars in tune. Unless I have them in a weird tuning (like my gretsch which is in C), it'd stay in tune for a decent amount of time. My cheap ass strat even lasts a few songs, but my SG was an absolute dream about it, although I've currently got it all bent out of shape modding it.  :dontknow:

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Too many wraps is the big thing I see with guitars that don't stay in tune.  When there's more string to stretch, it tends to want to.  Add to that, more movement over a nut that wouldn't otherwise have as much attention brought to it with less string being stretched over it.

 

[Strat Avenger]

These responses are totally overlooking the fact that strings stretch and do not always return to pitch. It makes no difference how solid the tuners or neck are. I have guitars with locking nuts and dive-only Floyds that go out of tune after 2 songs. The strings are double-locked; there's nowhere for them to go except for to stretch.

And on every guitar I own or play, I have to tune the B string slightly flat. It makes no sense to tune the G string flat, as that would only make the B sound even more sharp in comparison.

 

[Ace Flibble]

Strings only stretch up to a point. Stretch them out before you put 'em on and you'll have no problems. If you're locking the strings in tw places and they're still falling out of tune, something is wrong with your bridge (dulled knife edges) or nut (not clamping down properly).

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

These responses are totally overlooking the fact that strings stretch and do not always return to pitch. It makes no difference how solid the tuners or neck are. I have guitars with locking nuts and dive-only Floyds that go out of tune after 2 songs. The strings are double-locked; there's nowhere for them to go except for to stretch.

And on every guitar I own or play, I have to tune the B string slightly flat. It makes no sense to tune the G string flat, as that would only make the B sound even more sharp in comparison.

On a thread like this, YMMV has to be automatic and understood.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Strings only stretch up to a point. Stretch them out before you put 'em on and you'll have no problems. If you're locking the strings in tw places and they're still falling out of tune, something is wrong with your bridge (dulled knife edges) or nut (not clamping down properly).

All strings continue to stretch until they're dead.  It's why locking systems have fine tuners.

 

[Strat Avenger]

Strings only stretch up to a point. Stretch them out before you put 'em on and you'll have no problems. If you're locking the strings in tw places and they're still falling out of tune, something is wrong with your bridge (dulled knife edges) or nut (not clamping down properly).

That's just silly. I definitely stretch my strings thoroughly, and as I said in a previous post, it doesn't matter what guitar or what kind of bridge. if there is so much as a 5-degree temperature change in the room, the guitar will not be perfectly in-tune. There's not "something wrong" with the last 20 guitars I have owned in my life.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

Not to diminish your plight, but the same thing is said by the guys with tuning problems.  "I tune all my guitars like this and have for 20 years, and none of them stay in tune."

 

[AprioriMark]

Trems never stay in tune, at least in my monster mitts.  Floyds certainly hold tuning the best (in my experience), but I can't abide them personally.  Ultimately, I'm a hardtail guy.  I played a show last night at First Night in Tacoma for NYE, with the temperature hovering around freezing on the main stage at 9-10pm.  While I couldn't feel my hands by the third song, my Warmoth double cutaway LP JR with Sperzel locking tuners, a tele bridge and a P-rails pickup NEVER went out of tune with 24 hour old strings. 

In other words, use quality parts, set it up right, and accept that trems will never be perfect, and you'll be a happy camper.  Warmoth necks and bodies are second to none, period.  Last night reaffirmed that for me.

-Mark

 

[jay4321]

Most of mine are hardtails with locking tuners, no tuning issues. The Planet Waves-equipped ones are pretty much ideal for me apart from their weight and appearance (minor qualms), and those with Warmoth Pro necks don't seem to care about temperature. As the guitars add up I like to keep maintenance simple, the more time spent adjusting them the less time there is to play them.

 

[stubhead]

Well, not to get into perfesser-land, but - the equal-temperament tuning that has to be used to play in 12 keys has serious deviations from "just intonation", AKA harmonic-series tuning. Scroll down here to the chart labeled "Comparison to just intonation" -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament#Comparison_to_just_intonation

What you see is that major 7ths and minor 9ths are 11.73 cents off, minor 3rds and major 6ths are a whopping 15.64 cents off.

A "cent" is 1/100th of the distance between two adjacent notes. With some training, it's easy to hear an interval that's more than 4 or 5 cents off, and because the way the ET tuning works, there are chords where the notes that are + cents off are added to the notes that are = cents off. If you play a chord with an augmented 4th and a minor 6th, you're looking at notes that are a whopping 31 cents off from each other! Eeeeeeeyew.....  :sad:

The point being that all guitars are noticeably and permanently out of tune. But you train your ear to gloss over it. Most people who play steel guitar with any serious interest take some time to work on intervals training - playing against a drone tone, counting out the "beats"... One end result is that you notice much of your favorite music is really, really out-of-tune - so you then have to train yourself to get over it.

I would get reamed for saying this on certain forums, but I think one of the reasons that jazz guitarists favor fat, thuddy hollowbodies (even flatwound strings!) is because there really aren't many upper harmonics - so if they go fast enough, you won't realize how out-of-tune the complex chords are. Ditto for fat, thuddy nylon strings for classical guitarists. It's much harder to distinguish the actual tuned center of low, flubbery tones, because the wavelengths are so long. Ever see your tuner freak out over the low B of a 5-string bass? It can't find the note.

 

[mayfly]

I just did a show. I beat the hell out of my planet waves equipped warmoth tele with a pro neck. Did not have tuning problems.

Ymmv