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Joined: Jan 2006
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If I tune my guitar open string to the tuner and take an e-chord at the first frets, my g-string sounds terribly out of tune, a little g-string tuning by ear, gives an e-chord that sounds perfect, but then other chords is out of tune, but how do I get a reasonable compromise.How do you deal with this problem?
Strat
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If I tune my guitar open string to the tuner and take an e-chord at the first frets, my g-string sounds terribly out of tune, a little g-string tuning by ear, gives an e-chord that sounds perfect, but then other chords is out of tune, but how do I get a reasonable compromise.How do you deal with this problem?
Strat The trick is to tune your "G" a little bit flat, just a few cents. Try it - you'll find that all of your barre chords will be in tune. Regards, Bob
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Also when you tune your guitar tune in playing mode. If you play loud, tune it loud. If you play soft, tune it soft. That is, in other words, use the same force on the strings for tuning as you would playing on stage.
Desktop; i7-2600k, 8 GB mem., Win 10 Pro, BIAB 2017; RB 2017 - latest build
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Interesting :-)
But why is it centered about the g-string solely ?
Strat
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By the way, how flat tune is appropriate for the g-string (maybe the tuner developers should have taken this into consideration when they designed their tuners)
Strat
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Hi Stratocaster.
A lot of tuning problems on the first three frets are caused by the slots in the nut being badly cut. If the slot is too shallow, the string is too high and has a long travel to the fingerboard. This stretches the string as it's fretted and causes the pitch to rise slightly. As you play further up the fingerboard the angle over the nut is not as great and the pitch difference decreases. If the problem only occurs on one string, this is usually the cause.
Try tuning the open string and then measure the pitch at the first up to the fifth frets and see if the pitch variation drops off. If it does, you need to cut the slot deeper. Be careful not to overdo it or you'll get fret buzz instead.
We once had a very expensive Strat brought into us because the bottom E string was sharp on the first two frets and the shop where it had been bought didn't know why. It took us two minutes to re-cut the nut and the problem was solved.
Hope this helps.
ROG.
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My first thought is that the intonation is off. the bridge saddle needs to be set properly.
Height of the strings also matter. As you press down, you are stretching the sting and that affects the tuning. But the proper intonation settings are extremely critical.
If you're not sure how to do a proper set up on the guitar, take it to a luthier and pay them to do the set up for you.
I've also seen people complain about their tuning and it ended up being how they applied the pressure from their fingers. Our guitarist in one band had a Strat and was always complaining about his tuning. He loved that my SG always kept perfect tune. So one night, we swapped for a set. Suddenly, my SG was all out of tune and the Strat kept perfect tune. It came down to the person playing the guitar since both guitars were perfectly set up.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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If you're not sure how to do a proper set up on the guitar, take it to a luthier and pay them to do the set up for you. . And after your guitar is properly set up, don't start experimenting with new strings. Your luthier will ask you what strings you want on the guitar and will set the guitar for that set of strings If you suddenly decide that you are going to put extra light strings on a guitar that was set up for medium strings, don't expect it to intonate the same.
Keith
2026 Audiophile Windows 11 RYZEN THREADRIPPER 3960X 4.5GHZ 128 GB RAM 2 Nvidia RTX 3090s, Vegas,Acid,SoundForge,Izotope Production,Melodyne Studio,SONAR,3 Raven Mtis
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If you're not sure how to do a proper set up on the guitar, take it to a luthier and pay them to do the set up for you. . And after your guitar is properly set up, don't start experimenting with new strings. Your luthier will ask you what strings you want on the guitar and will set the guitar for that set of strings If you suddenly decide that you are going to put extra light strings on a guitar that was set up for medium strings, don't expect it to intonate the same. Good point. I think experimenting with the same exact gauge sets from different mfgs would be OK but certainly when you switch gauges, you need to check the intonation because you have just altered one of the important parts of the intonation equation. Mechanical physics apply.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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Stratocaster, everything shared so far is of great value. Now, I'm going to make the bold assumption that the electric guitar you own is in fact a Stratocaster. I will say that in addition to being one of the most versatile guitars ever designed, it is also one of the easiest to screw up from an intonation standpoint - this is down to so many different design changes introduced over the years in the strat. Different bridge designs and tremelo functions, tuning machines, saddles, neck adjustments, etc. Do you know another Strat player in your town that has a dedicated guitar technician? If so, go there first. My strat was an early 2000's Made in Mexico Fat Strat. I could never get the tremelo to float properly without screwing up intonation - but I also didn't want to spend countless dollars getting a technician to constantly be adjusting it, so about 6 months into ownership, I made the decision to put all 5 springs on the tremelo mechanism and essentially turn it into a hard-tail. The whammy bar stayed in the case the rest of the time I owned it. I now have an Epiphone Nighthawk Custom Reissue, with same scale length, true hard-tail string through body bridge, set neck, and very strat-like tone when the humbuckers are tapped, but with sustain for days compared to my strat. I really don't miss the strat whatsoever as a result. A 'real' strat player that employs whammy bar would be quite frustrated with my Nighthawk. There's countless options for trying to get a usable/stable tremelo on the strat; from locking tuners on one end of the string, to roller nuts, to roller saddles to elimination of screw-plate friction, to all kinds of 'tone blocks'. The existence of these myriad devices can be taken as evidence of the frustration of strat players with this needed, yet mind-boggling combinations of adjustments that can be made. It's also probably evidence of our desire to constantly want to adjust and improve. Here in Colorado Springs, there's a company that makes an interesting bolt-in tremelo system which is quite popular, the Super-V system. https://www.super-vee.com/Pretty interesting technology in this system, and supposedly it does not require any destructive modifications to the guitar. https://www.super-vee.com/technology.htmlAnyways, I wish you the best on your quest.
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