When is it time for a fret job?

[Mr. C]

My solution....have more guitars!
That way you don't ever have to overplay any one. [/QUOTE]

All I can say is thank you!!! You've given me the perfect reply when my wife asks why I need another guitar. May I say you are just brilliant Miroslav!

[miroslav]

May I say you are just brilliant Miroslav!

Thank you....I'll be playing here all week.....

[miroslav]

Posted at the same time, Miro. Great minds and all that.

I have no issues with what you've posted and I wasn't trying to get you and Mutt in each others' shit. It's all good man. The guitar ain't perfect and neither are we.

I got nothing to get into with Mutt.


OK...here's another "Miro-tuning" thing you can chuckle about.
So everything I said earlier still stands. When I finish setting up and tuning a guitar, I've added one more step.

I have a decent number of guitars...a few vintage ones that I don't beat up too often, a couple of "special purpose"....but also a bunch of my "every day" guitars. As I said earlier, I find that you can tune similar models identically, and they will still have their individual tuning personality (another reason why just one "standard" method doesn't always work, and everyone ends up fudging as they play to compensate).
Now...I happen to have one tuner that allows me to program into it eight of my own "sweetened" tunings (along with a lot of the commercial ones out there...Buzz Feiten, etc that are already in the tuner.)
What I've done with eight of my "every day" guitars, is once I set them up as perfectly as I could, make note of whatever "personality" each one has, the little bit of "offset" needed here-n-there...which is going to be different for each of the other guitars...and then I program those differences into my tuner, that way when I pick up a particular guitar, I punch up my sweetened tuning for it.
It just speeds up the tuning process and gets that specific guitar into its fine-tuned mode easier.
Now climate will always play a part, and force additional changes when it swings form one extreme to another...but the guitar's personality never changes permanently (maybe slowly over many years)....so I have these programmed tunings I can use, and I can always reprogram if needed.
This is just another little time-saver, and when I'm recording and rechecking my tuning after every 2-3 passes for the sake of continuity in accuracy, and later comping in the DAW...the programmed "personality" tunings make it easier.

[Sky Blue Lou]

Programmable tuners!?!

My mind asplode.

[miroslav]

Programmable tuners!?!

My mind asplode.

Don't tell Mutt...he'll just get upset.

[muttley600]

Mutt only knows what mutt knows and anything else he scoffs at.
Nothing new there...that's old news, and he's not going to really debunk what I said, 'cuz he can't...he'll just scoff at it as he usually does.

The intonation method I mentioned earlier is not something I came up with...it's a legit method, and an alternative to the old harmonic/12th fret approach which can work in a lot of cases, but the alternative provides a sweeter tunning across the entire neck and minimizes the amount of needed as-you-play adjustments that Mutt was referring to earlier.
It does take longer to intonate with this alternative method, but I wouldn't be continuing to use it on the rest of my guitars if it was worse than the "standard" method or if it made no difference at all.
I can point you to a website that describes the alternative method....if you think it's just something I made up.
Try both...use what you prefer.

AFA the pressing of the sting to tune rather than doing the traditional open string tune....that's my own, though I'm sure someone else did it before me. That's just pure common sense, because when you press a string (as was already discussed somewhat within the jumbo vs smaller fret discussion)...it's going to stretch the string from its open string position, and change the tuning slightly...just like pressing too hard with jumbo frets.
If you play open a lot and mostly in the first 3 frets...tune with the open strings.
But if you're like me, and especially when playing electric, you are pressing on the strings 95% of the time....WTF would you want to tune to open strings for...?

And the other point, about occasionally fine-tuning for a specific range of the neck...well, that's mostly a studio thing, where you're going to lay down one track and play a specific set of chords/licks. If they happen all to occur say, between the 5th and 12th frets...press/tune your strings in that area and you will fine-tune for that.
This too is nothing unusual or weird....it's been done before I ever did it.
For overall playing, live gig playing....you certainly wouldn't want to fine-tune for a specific range of the neck.
Like I said, it's just a studio thing, no different than say tuning so that the 3-4 chords you may be using for a given song are as prefect sounding as possible relative to each other and the song...and not worry about chords in other positions that may be off, which you are not going to play anyway.
Say you're doing mostly minor chords on a track, all within a few frets of each other, you can tune more specific to them, and they will sound sweeter. Again...that's nothing new or rocket science, and it works better for some things than other....but occasionally it helps a lot if you want to get the best tuned sound on a track.

At any rate, take the time to try it all and if doesn't work for you...you don't have to do it...
...or you can avoid trying it and just follow Mutt's absolute/only approach.

Oh Mutt....the last couple of threads where you said I needed to get the last word in, you went on for another handfull of posts well after me....so I'll take this one, ...that is, if you decide not to reply.

See what I mean.

[muttley600]

I got nothing to get into with Mutt.


OK...here's another "Miro-tuning" thing you can chuckle about.
So everything I said earlier still stands. When I finish setting up and tuning a guitar, I've added one more step.

I have a decent number of guitars...a few vintage ones that I don't beat up too often, a couple of "special purpose"....but also a bunch of my "every day" guitars. As I said earlier, I find that you can tune similar models identically, and they will still have their individual tuning personality (another reason why just one "standard" method doesn't always work, and everyone ends up fudging as they play to compensate).
Now...I happen to have one tuner that allows me to program into it eight of my own "sweetened" tunings (along with a lot of the commercial ones out there...Buzz Feiten, etc that are already in the tuner.)
What I've done with eight of my "every day" guitars, is once I set them up as perfectly as I could, make note of whatever "personality" each one has, the little bit of "offset" needed here-n-there...which is going to be different for each of the other guitars...and then I program those differences into my tuner, that way when I pick up a particular guitar, I punch up my sweetened tuning for it.
It just speeds up the tuning process and gets that specific guitar into its fine-tuned mode easier.
Now climate will always play a part, and force additional changes when it swings form one extreme to another...but the guitar's personality never changes permanently (maybe slowly over many years)....so I have these programmed tunings I can use, and I can always reprogram if needed.
This is just another little time-saver, and when I'm recording and rechecking my tuning after every 2-3 passes for the sake of continuity in accuracy, and later comping in the DAW...the programmed "personality" tunings make it easier.

See what I mean.

[Sky Blue Lou]

See what I mean.

Miro being Miro. Good thing he's not a mod, yeah?

I don't think anyone here knows the science of the damned thing like you do but I am interested in how other people approach the inefficiencies (good word here?) of guitar tuning. If it "works" for Miro's ears that's a good thing for him and maybe an angle others might try. YMMV and all that... The absolute of the thing is not in question. The resolutions - however inadequate - are bound to differ. It's like Scott taking ponies and Amundson dogs. (Maybe best not to go there...bloody skandahoovians!)

[Greg_L]

I use a tuner

[rayc]

Scott + Ponies (& tractors initially) = disaster for EVERYONE involved
Admunson + Dogs = 1st, surviving & not getting very much press in the Commonwealth.

I've noted that the adjustment my luthier made to my semi acoustics, ( to make it easier for me to keep the floating bridge in place he moved it away from the bridge & hard up against the bridge pickup rather than in line with the F hole notches & set the bridge intonation for best fit), means that no tuning process gets me good intonation beyond 5th fret, (luckily I don't play lead or barre chords).

Geeze, I must've come across as totally ignorant for him to decide to do that.