Fine Tuning
June Moris June 11, 2009 - 1:57 pm .
Introduction.
Even with so many tuners on the market you might still find yourself sometimes with no tuner around or one that doesn’t work or the batteries ran out. Tuners are not always a 100% reliable eather. You tuned the guitar and it’s still not in tune. I double check my guitar by checking harmonics and I sometimes need to do some extra adjustment. I do this without any gear and is the final touch to a perfectly tuned guitar.
Rough tuning.
The following are steps to fine tuning. Before we get to this we need to roughly tune each string
to its pitch. It won’t work if the open G string plays F instead of G. Tune it up first as close
as possible towards G. You don’t need absolute pitch to fine tune and the guitar will surely be in tune. Also you need to make sure that string 6 has correct pitch in order to properly hear the harmonic on the fifth fret and because all other strings will be adjusted to it.
Fine tuning.
Frets 5 and 7 on 2 consecutive strings(not string 2 and 3)both produce the same harmonic. On checking both harmonics you should hear one tone.
Example: The harmonic on the low E-String fret 5 produces an E two octaves higher and the same pitch as the open highest string. The harmonic on fret 7 of the A-string produces the same harmonic.
When these 2 harmonics are not the same you will hear a pulse. Its frequency is the difference between the frequencies of both harmonics. So if harmonic in tune is 800hz and the other 810 you will hear a pulse of 10hz. The faster the pulse the bigger the difference in pitch between the two strings. Adjust the next string to the one in tune. The pulse will slow down until you will hear only one tone on playing both harmonics.
Then both strings are in tune and you can move on to he next string. Now you base yourself on string 5 as the one in tune. Play the harmonic on the fifth fret and play the harmonic on the seventh fret of string four.
Note: I actually find it easier to hear the pulse when playing the harmonic of the string that needs to be tuned first.
