Earvana Intonation System

[Glenn Drakeley]

Any 6 string tappers, acoustic or electric, tapping on an Earvana Intonation System equipped instrument ?

I suppose this question also applies to the melody side of the TapTars of the homebuilders, anybody considered it ??

Info at http://www.earvana.com

[SkinnyDevil]

Glad to see this post, Glenn. I'm looking into their product now. I like the comparison chart with the Buzz Feiten system, even if I don;t entirely understand it.

[Bearguitars]

for my opinion is the earvana saddle a very great idea
- for those who play with open strings. But, wusup on the 3.th fret, for an example?

For me, who have a damper on the 1. fret makes no sense.
I tune my tap guitars in region of my fretboard, where I´ve allmost played: in the bass region on the 5th fret, in the treble region on the 7th fret. Then I check on higher and lower frets.
If the over all strings the string action and intonation is good adjusted, should it be OK.

Well it´s only my sigth....

http://www.geocities.com/bearguitars/

[traktor]

Originally posted by SkinnyDevil
Glad to see this post, Glenn. I'm looking into their product now. I like the comparison chart with the Buzz Feiten system, even if I don;t entirely understand it. Unless I greatly misunderstand, they are basically saying that setting the intonation system at the nut provides an inexpensive way to provide compensated intonation.

Is it 'as good'? Can't say, because, so far, can't hear.

From what I understand about compensating the intonation, it looks like it should improve the 'in tune' sound of a guitar. And from what I understand about compensating the intonation, it would seem that we'd need somewhat different adjustments for long-scale tapping instruments compared to standard guitars. (But maybe not; would have to test and measure to hear and feel certain.)

This is a very interesting link, and a clever idea. I think it should work. The chart comparing tuning offsets is quite informative.

[BrendaEM]

I agree with Bearguitar. I think that if you are playing with a dampner, a compensated nut isn't going help much, any more than increasing headstock tilt.

Fretting compensated for string stretch might help intonation, but even then string heights are low on tappers.

[rjgoos]

(This is likely to get a response from Traktor)

With a long-scale instrument, with low-tension strings, where the strings are tapped, and with such wide differences in string gauge, is it possible to have such ultra-high-precision intonation in the first place? Of course, bad intonation is bad intonation, but to get within a cent or so across the whole fretboard, is that really, truly, possible?? Not to diss the Earvana, or Feiten system, but I've always been sceptical.

Jay

[traktor]

In surveys, what I've heard reported is that the average guy on the street can hear a difference of 3 cents. The average musician can hear a difference of 2 cents. Studio pros probably hear even better.

But remember that it is much like tuning in general -- you can tune up at the beginning of the song or a set. After playing for a while, as you stretch and wiggle the strings, and as temperature and humidity change, and as time passes, your instrument moves away from being nicely in tune.

When your 'in-tuneness' is closer to what the ear hears as 'correct', then even as your instrument naturally moves away from that perfect tuning, you're still closer than if you'd not been so close to begin with.

This is very similar to doing an excellent tune-up as opposed to a sloppy one. The sloppy one might sound 'sort of ok' at the beginning of the set, but starts sounding stinky faster. The excellent tune-up is likely to last longer and sound better during the set.

Also, in Feiten's measured tests, only about nine out of ten surveyed musicians heard the difference. That is to say, some either didn't hear it, or thought it didn't matter.

And, of course, sometimes one is playing with effects so dense that you could be pulling cat's tails to hear them yowl and the audience couldn't tell the difference.

Or you might play sour-chord ostinatos in a loud fashion, and dissonant stuff reveals much less about whether you're playing 'in tune' or not.

Or ... sometimes your playing might be so inspired that perhaps the audience doesn't actually think much about how on-pitch you might be.

For most of us, when we hear a Feitenized instrument tuned up we say, 'Hey, that really sounds pure and in-tune." And vice-versa.

Although many powerful musicians with keen ears swear by Feiten's system -- Larry Carlton, Liona Boyd, Adrian Belew, Robbin Ford, Stu Hamm, Jimmy Haslip, Jackson Browne, Robert Fripp, and many more -- in actual fact, each of us should listen for ourself. Of course, it's nicest if you have an instrument in hand, tune up, and then play a dense chord all across the fretboard and see if it sounds sweet ... or off.

As regards our long-scales, and low tension, it means that you should play *on* the fret, because playing mid-fret makes it more difficult to avoid sharping the string when you hit it harder. As regards having instruments with a wider range of string gauges, it means that the ear can more easily hear when it's 'off.'

But it always comes back to this: You've got ears. Listen.

[rjgoos]

Well, forgive me Trak, for continuing this...

Can one really put an instrument in a "temperment" by adjusting the nut and/or bridge? I mean, wouldn't you have to adjust all 20-some frets a little (an impossibility with a standard neck design), to really make a guitar sound absolutely in tune all up and down the neck?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing these systems, just skeptical that one can install after-the-fact some sort of temperment to a fretboard whose frets were installed without.


Jay

[traktor]

Originally posted by rjgoos
Well, forgive me Trak, for continuing this...You are forgiven!
Can one really put an instrument in a "temperment" by adjusting the nut and/or bridge? I mean, wouldn't you have to adjust all 20-some frets a little (an impossibility with a standard neck design), to really make a guitar sound absolutely in tune all up and down the neck? You've got two things mixed together, like tobasco salad dressing.

If you want a particular 'temperament', then you'd need to adjust all of the frets, and most likely the instrument would play properly only in one key.

On the other hand, if you choose to use 'equal temperament' which is a fudged temperament so that all keys sound equally in-tune (or out-of-tune), then you just set the frets up on the logarithmic scale originated by Pythagoras, using the calculation commonly called the Rule of Eighteen. And presto! Equal temperament.

Now that this has been handled ... we turn to the question of how 'in tune' it sounds.

If all metal strings were perfection, and behaved perfectly, then Feiten/Earvana wouldn't be needed, and you wouldn't need asjustable string saddles either. A string twice as long would vibrate exactly half as fast, and its harmonics would line up perfectly. And so on.

But strings don't work exactly that way. For example, the ends of the string, where it's attached to a nut or a saddle, is kind of stiff, compared to the middle of the string.

Next, big fat strings don't vibrate exactly the same as teeny little strings.

Next, when you press a string to a fret, you've created a 'triangle' of two legs, compared to the length of the string when it was untouched. Is the length of the string with the two legs exactly the same as the string before it was pressed to the fret? No. As you know, the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two remaining sides. And all angles have some sort of relationship like this. The length of the two sides is not the same as the length of the hypotenuse. So the string is being stretched by being fretted. Is it being stretched differently when fretted near the nut, than when fretted in the middle of the fretboard? Yes.

Fourthly, human ears do not hear perfectly. Our hearing is non-linear.

So we have a perfect set of frets aligned upon a logarithmic scale, and upon these frets some strings which don't act perfectly, which vibrate differently depending upon length and mass and the act of fretting, and then heard imperfectly by a human ear.

Any wonder that some adjustments sound better than others?

[BigDaddyPoo]

So as soon as you fret the string this nut has no effect, right?
And how is it that you "tap" an open note? Especially when, as on Mobius and most tapping instruments, there is a dampner killing open notes as Bearguitars pointed out?
Maybe I don't understand what this thing does, but then I am early in my engineering education. I've only just now started my junior year.