True Temperament Guitars

I stumbled across three interesting things tonight.

First, I purchased and installed ClearTune, which is a pretty kick ass guitar tuner for the iPhone. While a few people in reviews had issues with it, most of the individuals who got it working said it was the best tuner they’ve ever used. I have to say, it seems deadly accurate for me. It not only has a coarse scale, but it also has a fine scale, so you can see just how many cents you are off and adjust the string even further.

Second, since ClearTune supports a wide range of musical temperaments, I decided to do some research about guitar temperaments, which eventually led me to True Temperament, a company that makes custom fret boards such that every string is in tune at every fret position (all guitars nowadays are a massive compromise — the only position that each string is essentially in tune is when the guitar is played completely open, every other position is most likely out of tune slightly).

And third, I found this demonstration video by Steve Vai, one of the big advocates of the True Temperament designs. Apparently I need to practice a bit more.