I played guitar for fun while I was in college, I did a research and publish my first "professional" paper about guitar pitch compensation. I’d like to share what I found, hope some of you are interested. When we press any string to the fret, we actually increase the string tension and raise the pitch, guitar maker usually move frets a little further to the head to compensate the pitch--it is called "pitch compensation". DIFFRENT STRINGS USUALLY NEEDS DIFFRENT COMPENSATIONS. Theoretically, there are basically two ways to make the pitch right.First way is to divide/separate each fret into six small pieces to please each string; of course it is not very practical. And the second way is the make the instrument, especially strings right. What my research found is that all of the 6 strings should have equal "prestretch" so the 6 strings should have same pitch compenstions."Prestreth" is the string stretch between "almost zero" tension to "on-pitch" tensions; it is about a few millimeters if I remember correctly. In the real world, few string set can be made having same prestretchs, or the tone and/or volume may suffer. So when we tune guitar, we have to favor the most commonly used register. For example, I tune low register when I sing folk songs; I tune higher register when I play solo guitar. I know some of you play so well and you play all of the notes... well, you have to pay more money to buy the most expensive guitar and the best strings.good luck! Baoli __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC