T1B

lazy? or really cool and inevitable?


a little bit of both?

Then there's this...

What is the difference between tune and intonation? I understand that tuning is simply tensioning the string at the neck, but, I don't quite get the intonation dealio hat apparently has to do with the bridge.

Tuning has to do with getting the open string to proper pitch. Intonation has to do with getting each note along the fretboard to proper pitch, which has to do with adjusting the position of the string saddle.

Ah, I get it now. It simply moves the bridge effectively making the string longer/shorter where as the tuning knob adjusts tension.

You would think that adjusting this distance wouldn't be necessary as the fret positions don't change. Or is it a matter of adjusting for particular intonations?

The fret positions don't change but the string tension does, necessitating adjustments to the effective string length. To be honest, though, rarely do I ever need to readjust the intonation once I have it set to a given tuning. Far more often, truss rod adjustments are necessary to counter temperature/humidity changes that alter the relief of the neck.

'Spray, my tech in San Francisco (Gary Brawer, who's also Satriani's tech) showed me that Evertune thing the last time I was there. He's absolutely apeshit enthusiastic about it, especially for studio work and/or rhythm playing. Conversely, he thinks the Robotune Gibsons are awful.

As for the staggered frets, they won't matter one way or the other in terms of using the Evertune. They help with normal bridges but the Evertune makes it a moot point. Your point about an E chord sounding great while a D chord won't? Also obviated by the Evertune. That thing keeps your intonation perfect everywhere, no matter how hard you press on the strings. Chords that would normally sound assfucked high up on the neck sound exactly right, even with a caveman pressing way too hard on top of using super jumbo frets.

You set it once...and forget it. Your guitar stays in tune with perfect intonation from that point on, until you change strings.

The only issue I found with it was in nailing down that balance point that allows you to do big bends. You have to loosen the thing enough to allow for those, and if you loosen it too much then it defeats the purpose. It's absolutely brilliant for jazz players, rhythm players, chugga-chugga metal players, country players, etc., but it takes some finessing to make it work perfectly for a blues player who does lots of step-and-a-half bends. It can be done, but it's not the no-brainer that it is for most other styles.

I saw a demo of one of those when I was in Seattle and thought it was the coolest fucking thing I'd ever seen....the fact that it can do auto special tunings is the kicker....weird thing though, they apparently can snap strings pretty quickly if you don't seat it in the tuning knob just exactly right

if I was an electric guy, I'd love to have one of those.....

Papa Willie wrote:How does it adjust for intonation weirdness, though? You can pay $50k for a guitar, and you will NOT be able to achieve perfect pitch on a D and an E chord at the same time.

That is precisely what it achieves.

http://www.evertune.com/artists/joe-satriani/

Once you set your intonation, it's set for the entire fretboard. It no longer matters what you play, how you play or where you play it. As long as you can at least get the basic intonation correct as a starting point, the rest is a done deal.

I can see the staggered frets working for that.

Perhaps, provided you apply dead-nuts equal finger pressure to each and every voicing over the entire neck. I don't know about you, but most people aren't able to do that. They press harder here and softer there, depending on a multitude of factors. With the Evertune, none of those factors matter. The only thing that matters is whether you can get the initial intonation correct, which is easily doable with most any halfway decent guitar.

Does it just instantly adjust?

Yes. That's exactly what it does. It adjusts instantly through the use of constantly moving saddles. They slide back and forth to counter different finger pressures.

Not sure I really understand how that thing works. As far as the video, that guy was getting pretty hardcore with his bends - even picking the guitar up by the strings, and it was still staying in tune damned good. If it breaks strings easily, like Felix said - that would be a problem.

No, Felix was referring to the Robo guitar and its specific tuners on the headstock. He's saying they have a tendency to break strings.

As for the Evertune, yes, what the guy was demonstrating by yanking so violently on the strings is that it simply doesn't matter what you do, you can't make the thing go out of tune or lose the intonation. Climate changes, temperature changes, the neck stiffening or loosening as it's moved from your living room to its case to your car to the gig and then back out of its case into a hot and humid bar setting, your guitar will remain in perfect tune. You don't need to worry about any of it. It continually adjusts the string tension to remain in tune, even if you have a hummingbird's touch on open chords and a sledgehammer touch on barre chords. Want to yank the bejeezus out of the G string while doing your best GG two-step bend impersonation? Have at it. That string will still be in perfect tune when you go back to play a minor 9th barre chord on the seventh fret. It doesn't even matter if the strings are old and crusted over with beer, sweat, snot, and groupie effluvia. Nothing changes.

Looks like it'll run you about $330 for one of those things. That's a bit high, but maybe not if it's as magical as they say...

The only reason I didn't get it is I didn't want to carve into my one-piece solid guitar body, which has a hardtail bridge. If it already had a carved-out route in the back, hell yeah, I'd be all over that thing.

Papa Willie wrote:http://www.evertune.com/lookin/

Okay - I watched the first video. It operates a lot like a Kahler or Floyd Rose to be honest with you.

Not really, no. Kahlers and Floyds are floating bridges. The entire fixed set of saddles moves back on forth on very lightly tensioned springs, and usually only three of them. This thing is different. The saddles themselves move, and each one has its own dedicated spring. Pulling on one string doesn't affect another string whatsoever, and that's the problem with floating bridges. A floating bridge is a constant compromise. This isn't. Each string is maintained individually, and much more consistently.

One huge problem I see, is that spring fatigue will be an issue (just as on Kahlers - never had a FR).

Again, no. The bridge itself isn't floating, and the strings aren't dependent on one another. Also, by having six heavy duty springs that aren't nearly as sensitive to every little thing the way they are with floating bridges, it's a different animal.

Is "Zone 2" offset enough to have a bigger area of travel for the smaller strings (as tuning keys don't alter the tune near as much on them as they do the bigger strings)?

You're still equating this to what happens with the interconnectedness between strings with a floating trem. Each string here has its own identity, its own mehcanical anchor, wholly independent of the others.

Seems to me like you'd have to snatch the whole bridge off to change the springs, and that would be a pain in the ass.

Just give it slack and pop 'em off, the same as with a floating bridge.

I don't see it having anything to do with intonation, though.

It has everything to do with intonation. Each string is constantly maintained. The intonation cannot be thrown off by differing finger pressures, which is what happens with conventional guitars.

And temperature change affects those springs as well as it does the strings - you can count on that.

Not according to Gary (and countless other users), who say the thing is absolutely stable, always. The specific point is that it is unaffected by the usual changes that always dick with tuning and intonation, including neck relief movement caused by temperature/humidity changes.

If you want, I'll call him tomorrow and ask about any issues with spring fatigue eventually mucking things up.

Here he talks a little about Joe's guitars, including the four fixed-bridge ones with Evertunes...

http://www.evertune.com/wp-content/uplo ... ayer-2.pdf

Van wrote: Not according to Gary (and countless other users), who say the thing is absolutely stable, always. The specific point is that it is unaffected by the usual changes that always dick with tuning and intonation, including neck relief movement caused by temperature/humidity changes.

If you want, I'll call him tomorrow and ask about any issues with spring fatigue eventually mucking things up.

Here he talks a little about Joe's guitars, including the four fixed-bridge ones with Evertunes...

http://www.evertune.com/wp-content/uplo ... ayer-2.pdf

that's impressive as hell....again, I'm not an electric guy but if I was I think I'd prefer the evertune to the robot guitar tuner

They serve very different purposes.

I have a question about that bridge that is continually adjusting itself. Doesn't it become a problem with a guitarist who actually wants the effect of a tonal change at times? I am talking about someone like an SRV who bends the fukk out of the instrument to create an effect. Is there a way to lock it in place?

smackaholic wrote:I have a question about that bridge that is continually adjusting itself. Doesn't it become a problem with a guitarist who actually wants the effect of a tonal change at times? I am talking about someone like an SRV who bends the fukk out of the instrument to create an effect. Is there a way to lock it in place?

As for the Evertune, yes, what the guy was demonstrating by yanking so violently on the strings is that it simply doesn't matter what you do, you can't make the thing go out of tune or lose the intonation. Climate changes, temperature changes, the neck stiffening or loosening as it's moved from your living room to its case to your car to the gig and then back out of its case into a hot and humid bar setting, your guitar will remain in perfect tune. You don't need to worry about any of it. It continually adjusts the string tension to remain in tune, even if you have a hummingbird's touch on open chords and a sledgehammer touch on barre chords. Want to yank the bejeezus out of the G string while doing your best GG two-step bend impersonation? Have at it. That string will still be in perfect tune when you go back to play a minor 9th barre chord on the seventh fret. It doesn't even matter if the strings are old and crusted over with beer, sweat, snot, and groupie effluvia. Nothing changes.

...and...

The only issue I found with it was in nailing down that balance point that allows you to do big bends. You have to loosen the thing enough to allow for those, and if you loosen it too much then it defeats the purpose. It's absolutely brilliant for jazz players, rhythm players, chugga-chugga metal players, country players, etc., but it takes some finessing to make it work perfectly for a blues player who does lots of step-and-a-half bends. It can be done, but it's not the no-brainer that it is for most other styles.

You're just a born rebel.

Okay, to your point about spring-fatigue and the effect it might have down the road on the effectiveness of the Evertune system, I just called Gary's shop and the answer is...inconclusive. Gary is off until mid-April so I didn't get to talk to him, and the Evertune system has only been on the market for a year or two so it really hasn't been around long enough for anyone to know whether its effectiveness will diminish over time due to the springs stretching.

I suppose I could call Evertune directly and ask them the same question, but I don't really feel like it. Besides, I doubt they will be able to answer that question either. All the guy at Gary's shop could tell me is that so far there has been no evidence of any spring stretching on any of Joe's guitars or with any of their other guitars.

I guess time will tell, but Evertune does tout the thing as keeping your guitar in tune "for the life of the guitar." Worst case scenario, maybe you have to swap out springs every few years or so? I gotta say...bfd. I think anyone could live with that.

Van wrote:They serve very different purposes.

Of course they serve different purposes but the evertune seems much more practical from a players standpoint than a robot tuner......I remember going to see Albert King and I've never seen anybody struggle so much to keep his guitar in tune......he'd tune his ax during the middle of a song because he was a notorious bender.....guy should have fired his guitar tech right after that concert

Yep, my first thought while watching Guthrie Govan live recently was that he could certainly use something like this. The guy bends strings like a demon plus he plays wildly intricate chords high up on the neck so the Evertune is right up his alley. The only thing is, I'm not sure it's even available as part of a tremolo system. It may not be. I'm thinking it probably isn't, since the two designs seem at odds with one another.

~just called gary's shop again to ask that question and nope, the guy there says it's not designed for trem systems~

You know who this thing would really be perfect for? I mean besides any country, jazz, or rhythm-only player? Allan Holdsworth. He barely uses the trem on his guitar and what he uses it for is fairly unimportant anyway, but with the crazy chords he plays all over the neck? Yep, this thing would be heaven for a guy like that.

Springs that aren't stretched past their elastic limit, can pretty much last forever. I would guess that these bridge springs don't get anywhere near that limit. Even if you bend the fukk out of it, it seems as though the bridge hits its limit before the spring gets close to its elastic limit.

I am certain our resident fatass know it all can come in here and give a proper engineer explanation and maybe even throw in some formulae and charts.

Felix wrote:

Van wrote:They serve very different purposes.

Of course they serve different purposes but the evertune seems much more practical from a players standpoint than a robot tuner......I remember going to see Albert King and I've never seen anybody struggle so much to keep his guitar in tune......he'd tune his ax during the middle of a song because he was a notorious bender.....guy should have fired his guitar tech right after that concert

How can ya blame the tech. In case you hadn't noticed Albert was a big ole boy with a pair of meathooks that would make irie blush. I doubt there is a guitar tech on the planet that could make one of Albert's axes stand up to the mauling he subjected it to.

Rack you for getting to see one of the best bluesmen ever. I'll bet his tone was magnificent even when it wasn't anywhere in the zipcode it was supposed to be in.

Papa Willie wrote:

smackaholic wrote:Springs that aren't stretched past their elastic limit, can pretty much last forever. I would guess that these bridge springs don't get anywhere near that limit. Even if you bend the fukk out of it, it seems as though the bridge hits its limit before the spring gets close to its elastic limit.

I am certain our resident fatass know it all can come in here and give a proper engineer explanation and maybe even throw in some formulae and charts.

I hope you're just kidding, as opposed to being a dick-lynching niggar.

'Spray, smackaholic will correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure he was referring there to Mikey, not to you.

Van - sounds pretty fucking sweet, now. Seems like they'd be able to apply it to a whammy bar system, and I could easily see that being the best ever built.

I'm no Mikey, but it would seem to me that it couldn't work with a trem system for two fairly obvious reasons: 1. A trem system relies on a series of springs and a pivoting bridge resting in a carved-out route. The Evertune needs to occupy that same route. 2. The weakness of a trem system has to do with the imprecise movement of the pivoting block. The two or three springs that are lightly screwed into the wood of the body allow that block too much wiggle room, resulting in slight variations from one moment to the next. The Evertune's effectiveness would be negated by the imprecision of the floating block.

smackaholic wrote:
Rack you for getting to see one of the best bluesmen ever. I'll bet his tone was magnificent even when it wasn't anywhere in the zipcode it was supposed to be in.

he was amazing, one of the best pure blues players I've ever seen and one of the most entertaining concerts I ever attended....

Van wrote:'Spray, smackaholic will correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure he was referring there to Mikey, not to you.

yup.

spray, you may know guitars and chicken eating, but, mikey is the resident rocket surgeon.

And a fatass.

I was wondering what that smell was. Somebody crack a window open please.