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Comment by BrianHV

Yes, I should have gone logarithmic. But I spent enough time playing with that. Had to get back to work. ;) Thanks for figuring out that it's 16 cents. And yes, 16 cents is very noticeable. I might even say dramatic.

The thing is, tunesmith wasn't talking about a perfectly tuned equal temperament guitar. We're talking about tuning a guitar by ear so that one chord is sounds perfectly in tune (i.e., is in just temperament), then trying to play a different chord. It's going to sound off for the same reasons a just-tempered keyboard would. And as someone who constantly has to resist the urge to tune his B string too high in G major, I can tell you this isn't just a theoretical assertion.

That said, I have played on guitars (especially electric ones) that seem to resist sounding in tune even when the open strings are tuned "perfectly." Maybe that's a fret spacing defect in action. But it doesn't make the tuning-by-ear error negligible.

parent BrianHV 12 years ago

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