Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

This is a question for Paul Wilczynski. Do American guitars have a different system of fret temperament to European made ones? I ask because after playing a Rickenbacker and picking up a European made guitar like an Eko, the Eko does not sound quite in tune, yet after playing for a while the ear adjusts and it sounds fine. Similarly for the picky ear it is quite difficult to make them accord when played together. I was thinking that this may not be me (or my ear) or indeed the individual guitars but possibly a systemic American / European difference in finding the temperament between open and fretted notes . I should also say this applies to older guitars made before computers.

I'm not PW, but it's possible that the Eko's frets were laid out using the 18:1 ratio instead of the more accurate 17.8:1 ratio. Are both of your guitars set up and intonationed as close as possible? If one of the guitars has a high nut, or is intonated a little flat overall, then that will throw things off more than the fret scale might.

- Scott

Hi thnaks for your reply, I should have left the question open! I'm not sure what you mean by intonated properly, both Rick and Eko are fine internally it is only in relation to each other that the they are not right. You can by ear painstakingly find a decent median, but it really is like two different species.

Jimmy

Intonation refers to the ability of an instrument to be in tune with itself across the gamut of playing positions, and is a function of fret type, string gauge, nut height, neck angle, bridge height and saddle position (i.e., individual string length) and the precision used in guitar manufacture. If both guitars are intonated properly, they should sound fine with one another. You indicate that they are both "fine internally" but I'm not quite sure that they really are if they sound "off" with one another.

The one thing that might get to your question is that of fret size (maybe that's what you mean by temperament). Finger pressure is the wild card here: a guitar with jumbo frets when fingered heavily will be hopelessly out of tune (I know!) relative to one with smaller or older, more worn frets.

Here is one of those european fingerboards...

That reminds me of the microtonal guitars some folks play:

Halbert wrote:Here is one of those european fingerboards...

Looks like I did the work when I was totally drunk.

Actually, there is more spacing then I would have expected.

Drunk? Heck, I couldn't do a fret job that good cold stone sober...