Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#181

Post by busterarm » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC

dagmx wrote: post #180

busterarm wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No I'm assuming that most people on this board don't play exotic varieties of guitar and I'm trying to help people avoid any strange delusions like they might need these things to sound better on their instrument. That's already enough of a problem on online guitar boards... Also I can speak from experience. I was one of the first maybe half-dozen people to buy a TT neck outside of Sweden. I knew Anders and spoke to…

This is just pointless gatekeeping. You have an arbitrary subjective taste and have decided that anything outside of it is stupid without actually understanding what you dislike and why others might want it. Laminated necks again provide quite a bit of rigidity and stability against warpage. This is again just physics, there’s nothing mystical to it. There’s limits to how much a truss rod can do by itself. Wood moves…

> Laminated necks again provide quite a bit of rigidity and stability against warpage. This is again just physics, there’s nothing mystical to it. There’s limits to how much a truss rod can do by itself. Wood moves, any wood worker will tell as much and will tell you how to counter act warping by joining opposing wood grains or having stiffener pieces.

Omg you daft prick. I didn't say laminated necks are bad. I said 11 or 13 piece laminated necks are excessive and unnecessary. Especially in a basic 6 string Jackson. That _could_ have been one piece of wood at that price point. Three at most. That's just physics.

11 or 13 pieces of glued wood aren't doing anything more than 3 pieces would have in a guitar like that. "It's just physics".

Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#182

Post by kjkjadksj » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

YZF wrote: post #115

kjkjadksj wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of people like van halen also pretty much no one is exploring the entire neck on a single song. So the issue of the guitar not being perfectly intonated is irrelevant since they are using just a piece of its range.

A lot of simple songs are just open "cowboy" chords for sure. But those are played on the first frets while the guitar is typically intonated at the 12th fret and tuned with open strings. I would expect those first frets to be fairly "out" vs. the open strings.

If they are out most people don’t have the ear for it. A lot of people don’t even bust out their tuners and just tune off fretted note on previous string.

Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#183

Post by 52-6F-62 » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 4:01 AM UTC

dahart wrote: post #175

52-6F-62 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. But this is the guitar's design! Fixed temperament. There are many variations and other instruments that explicitly make that aspect of the instrument variable. There are even branches off of Spanish guitar design that use movable frets for that reason. But fixed temperament and that warble/etc IS guitar.

Mmm no, that’s getting history and the causal relationships a bit backward. The early guitars, like their predecessors (lutes), all had moveable frets, and their designers were trying to figure out how to fret various other tuning systems before 12-TET became the standard: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iuswrrest/api/core/bitstreams/5c... Some lute players were arguing in favor of equal temperament, and others were argu…

Lutes? Alright, Grokipedia. I understand the evolution of stringed instruments. But I said Spanish Guitar.

Get off it.

Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#184

Post by dahart » Sat, Mar 14, 2026, 3:27 PM UTC

52-6F-62 wrote: post #183

dahart wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mmm no, that’s getting history and the causal relationships a bit backward. The early guitars, like their predecessors (lutes), all had moveable frets, and their designers were trying to figure out how to fret various other tuning systems before 12-TET became the standard: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iuswrrest/api/core/bitstreams/5c... Some lute players were arguing in favor of equal temperament, and others were argu…

Lutes? Alright, Grokipedia. I understand the evolution of stringed instruments. But I said Spanish Guitar. Get off it.

Do you understand the evolution of stringed instruments? That response totally convinces me otherwise.

Please feel free to elaborate. What about the Spanish Guitar? It came from the vihuela which came from the lute. The Spanish guitar is equal tempered because the lute went equal tempered before it. Nothing about the Spanish guitar is unique in terms of temperament.