True Temperament Necks – Cool Website

By Fred, on January 22nd, 2010

For all Guitar Enthusiasts

True Temperament Necks

I did not really know what to make out of this one when I saw it. But, if Steve Vai is playing a neck designed like this…it should be credible. Right?

Most Guitarists know that a guitar is a tonally imperfectly designed instrument. Haven’t we all bitched and moaned about the sudden tuning and intonation problems that are caused by changing strings, climate differences etc? Well look no more.

I’m not exactly sure of the science of this, but I think I will give it a brief try… Traditionally, on a guitar, equally and parallel spaced frets take only one factor of a vibrating strings tonal characteristic into account. It’s scale length. (I.e. the distance from nut to bridge)
Excluded is, the strings relative tension and its mass. This traditionally causes huge intonation problems. Since depending on the tuning, (and were assuming the Standard) we all know that the same note can occur multiple times at different places on the fret board. Sometimes though, although we have a perfect tuning on the open string, some sought after notes on this string sound out of tune when played further up the neck. In other words, a specific note will sound in tune on one part of the board and completely out of tune on a different part, even if all the strings are perfectly tuned. This is traditionally known as an intonation problem. Normally we adjust the scale length on the guitar to compensate for this.

Traditional way of setting intonation:

If a string sharpens itself going up the neck…we lengthen the scale length by shifting backwards the string saddles on the bridge.
If the guitar flattens itself as we go up the neck…we shorten the scale length by shifting forward the string saddles on the bridge.

Now, with True Temperament, the frets are spaced (bent) in such a fashion to give us pure notes anywhere on the fret board. Some frets are lengthened because the traditional spacing made a note seems sharp, and of course vice versa.

So…in guitarists speak. You can now fret a “D” chord and move it all the way up the neck and it will stay perfectly in pitch!

Well, I’m not sure about the look? But apparently these guitars play exactly like parallel straight fretted ones and sound beautifully in tune.

I’m keen to try!!!

Check out the following website.

Cheers for now!

Website: http://www.truetemperament.com

City: Johannesburg

Country: South Africa