? I’ve been playing guitar for over 20 years and as my ear has gotten better I have been burdened with the fact that the traditional tuning methods we use are just plain WRONG. Guitars are mathematically incorrect, they all are! ?No matter how good your intonation is, if you use the traditional tuning method of pure note tuning there is no way your guitar will be in tune all the way up and down the neck! I found this out after years of session playing that really good eared producers could hear it being out and most guitar players couldn’t because we got used to the guitar sounding this way and thought it was right! The conventional tuning methods are a compromise doing “tuning injustice” all over the guitar neck. I noticed that I would tune with all the notes tuned right and then I would have to do slight tuning adjustments while disregarding the tuner to make it sound “Sweet” or “Right”.

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? The search started 5 years back on how to fix this problem. I did some research and found out pianos are “temper tuned” and that’s why their tuning is so good. So I thought let’s apply that to guitar. After several years of trial and error I believe that this method of “temper tuning” for guitar is the only way to go, it simply works better ?and your guitar will sound beautiful anywhere on the neck and it simply blows away the traditional method.

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?So here’s the method: First and foremost you’ll need to set your guitars intonation properly with a fairly good tuner. I have a previous article on how to set your intonation and it’s very simple to do. Second I would recommend the Boss TU-12 series tuners on up or the Peterson strobe tuners, they are the best! The Boss Tu-12 is accurate to +/- 1cent so that’s very good and you can see exactly how many cents sharp or flat you are and that’s makes the tuning method easier. The Peterson is off the chart within 1/100th accuracy. The Peterson also has a “sweetened tuning” preset that’s very good!! ?I have a method that some strings will be pure note tuned to the tuner and that is shown as (0) and some other strings will be tuned SLIGHTLY sharp! So here’s the tuning offsets and these are VERY SLIGHT offsets but they sound great when done. Try tuning standard method and then tune “tempered” and you’ll instantly hear the difference guaranteed!!

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Low E string or 6^th string- 0- pure note

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A string or 5^th string - +1 cent SHARP

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D string or 4^th string- +1 cent SHARP

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G string or 3^rd string- +2 cents SHARP

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B string or 2^nd string -+1 cent SHARP

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E string or 1^st string – 0- pure note

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?There is another method that works great and that’s the Feiten system but that’s expensive and requires a small nut modification to your guitar and a different set of “tuning offsets”. This is a method you can use without any mods and certainly less expensive,? I would however invest in a high quality tuner sooner than later!

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Guitar Guru