MunichLuthier -> RE: Eventual end of guitars structural intonation issue (May 15 2015 17:00:35)
|
Hi all! Wow, lots of emotions here and arguing besides the topic.... anyhow, I'll try to help and clarify. Befor I do, I want to make clear what I use what words for: Temperament is the system we tune fixed instruments such as pianos, guitars, ... all instruments, where the player does not freely set the frequency of a tone. The tempered tuning came up as far as I know around 1700 with organs and the first hammer pianos and its the reason why Bach wrote the "well tempered piano" in order to demonstrate to the public that the tempered tuning allows to play in all keys. As a guitar is a fixed tuned instrument (we can not move the frets while we play) it is tuned in a tempered tuning in order to be able to play it in all keys. The other tuning system is a "pure tuning" (I am no native speaker) where the tones are tuned according to the key you play in. So an As can be different to a Gis in this system - for us, its the same fret and this is one of the reasons why violinists smile at us... Compensation has nothing to do with temperament, its just a correction that luthiers apply to a guitar as while we play, we increase the tension of a string and its length by pressing it down between two frets (the more we press, the worse ;-)). In oder to correct the intonation of aguitar, luthiers move the bridge between 1 and 3 mm (on a classic guitar) so that the scale gets longer. They usually do this with balancing the flageolett and pressed tone on the 12th fret. The compensation is different on all luthiers, on all kinds of construction, ... Intonation is how close a guitar and a players gets the frequency of each tone to the frequency it should have (according to tempered tuning if you want). So a good intonation is close to the target, a poor one is wrong and one can hear that. A violin player is only bussy with intonation as they have total freedom to set the frequency of each tone by the position they press and the vibrato thing you discussed (the rolling) is meant to vary the tone, which makes sense as the rolling varies the point where the string is pressed. Rolling on a guitar makes no sense, as the string always just starts swinging after the fret it lies on, but with rolling the player also changes the force of his finger up/downwards and thus creates the same effect, but he is doing that with changing the tension and not the position. ...I play cello for some years now, so I know what I speak about. So, sorry about that, you find all of the above on wikipedia and I am sure you know, but just to avoid that we missunderstand the words. What is my patent and why? I make guitars for 15 years now and as I started (autodidactively) I used my skills as a studied physician to think about the intonation issue, that I always faced on my guitars, as I am playing for 40 years now and I have a kind of perfect pitch and always suffered... I invest more than 200 hours of work in building a guitar and some 800 Euros in wood and material so why not investing some energy in a better intonation? Today, most guitars are made by CNC machines that are sawing the fret nuts based on a mathematic calculation. In earlier days (Torres, Ramirez, Hauser, Hermanos, name them ...) they determined the fret positions by listening and comparing to a violin or a piano and then they made a template for that and did not only rely on a calculation. This is the reason, why some of the old makers have an incredible well intonation. I listened to a concert with La Leona several times, I own a Hauser myself and have repaired another one and all were perfect in pitch. But the empiric times have gone and as most factories use CNC saws, the problem starts. What I did is close to what constructordeguitarras wrote: I decided not to compensate the brigde by comparing the 12th fret with flageolett (which btw. makes that table useless that El Kiko posted, because alomost all guitars are fine at the open string and at the 12th exactly because of this method!) but I decided to move each fret away from its calculated position in order to compensate each one individually. The assumption was that the error gets bigger, the shorter the remaining string length is and thus the first fret gets almost no compensation and the 19th gets a lot. So now we have a tiny thin 1st string and a big fat 6th string and of course, you need different compensations for both of them. So if used to its full extend, my patent provides non parallel frets that "twists" the more, the closer you get to the 19th or 20th fret. And I also made a variation, where luthiers can only use the compensation that I calculate for the 1st string and as the 6th needs more, they slightly twist the bridge. So in this application, my patent combines new and old way of compensation. This variation is made, because I wanted my patent to be applicable also for those luthiers, who use a CNC saw, as they can only saw parallel nuts. What is the result of my patent or intonation impovement? Guitars that use this system do not only intonate correctly at the 1-3rd fret and around the 12th but also where the real problems are around frets no. 6-10 and 14 and above. If one saws by hand and makes non-parallel frets, the results are fantastic, on parallel they are at least better than in conventional fingerboards. What are the limits? I still do not calculate each position individually because almost no guitar maker is able to build that. My goal was to produce something everyone can use without totally changing manufacturing equipement. So my improvement also has some issues where intonation is not perfect. If you look at the fretmobile from Chouard it is a great solution, but is it practical? What happens, of you bend the string and flip over the end of each piece of fret...? And yes, when a string is out of tune, the entire guitar is out too - I am working on inventing a miracle but hey that's damn hard... ;-) And yes, some guitars don't need my system, as e.g. on flamenco you have a very low acting hight and the increase in tension and length is not producing audible faults. And other guitars are fretted by an old or just good template. But one can say that if everyone uses my patent, there would be hardly any more poor intonating guitars. What I do when correcting the intonation on an existing guitar, I always try to make that as smooth as possible for the guitar. So in many applications, I get very good results by using Konrad Schwingensteins method that is known as buzz feiten in the US (actually, they stole his patent, because its only protecting him in Germany). I use it because it avoids a new fretting of the guitar which is a heavy work that has a lot of impact. But on some guitars, the miss-match of the frets is so heavy, that only new frets according to my system do the job. Whether you want to use my system or not is up to you - I don't force anybody. I did invest some three years of research for an existing method but there is none and for fine tuning my calculation method. I built 4 guitars in order to test it and changed fretboards on them partly three times - so I did a lot of work and it costed a lot of money. So I patented it in order to protect my intellectual property. The meaning (and the legal precondition!) of a patent is to produce an exact description of what you do in order to allow everybody to do the same BUT everyone knows, that there is an inventor and he must be compensated for his work. I give it for free to everyone who wants to try or who builds guitar as a hobby and I charge a fee of 20,- EUR per fingerboard for everyone who uses it commercially. RNJ you can get it all at the patent office or just write me an email over my website. So, thats more or less all I can add. Questions are welcome, doubts too, missunderstandings are appreciated and will be clarified but insults will be ignored ;-) Cheers to all of you! Michael
|
|
|
|