One thing I will say about the measuring tool I posted, the suggested action height printed on it are low. Very low. Fender and G&L both suggest 5/64” on the bass side and 4/64” on the treble side.
I think the biggest problem with a big string gauge on the bottom will be it fitting into the nut slot. Otherwise unless you use the bottom string from a bass I don’t see a problem. Maybe, MAYBE if you use an unbalanced set for a long time you might introduce a twist into the neck.
Personally? That looks like a lot of fuckin’ work. I have split post tuners, I cut the length so that I get a couple wraps on the low E to several wraps on the high E and don’t think much about it. I tune using a tuner, doing some stretching work to take the initial instability out of the new strings. One the stings are stable, I do a tuning pass with the tuner, play a few chords then maybe tweak by ear. Then I get after it.
Any subsequent session starts with 10 seconds of tuning either with a tuner or against who I’m playing with and it’s go time.
Well, turns out I didn’t need any ruler, nor even the feeler gauges (except out of curiosity).
Just grabbed a screwdriver and went at the screws on each of the three barrels to raise the action, tightened back up the strings, gave it a quick tuning.
You nay-sayers about the three barrel saddles…wait for it…wait…intonation after randomly raising the action? Dead on balls accurate at the twelfth fret.
And, of course, no more fret buzz. Probably will repeat the process to raise the action a bit further, when I get around to it, but for now, it’s fine.
That’s physically impossible unless you have a tilt compensated set of barrels. The D and G string for example cannot both be the same length and both be completely intonated.
I’m still not sold on Sweetened tunings. The intonation on electric guitars is so good. I use Drop D and Open G. Covering Joni Mitchell requires some very odd tunings. Both Sides Now is Open D.
But someone has to convince me sweetened brings much to a song. Maybe I’d use the James Taylor sweetened to cover his stuff. But it sounds fine in standard.
On any Peterson tuner James Taylor sweetened is SBJ select that and tune. He might come by with a box of chocolate.
James Taylor (Standard with offsets) - E2, A2, D3, G3, B3, E4
I mean, I sweeten my tunings by ear. Play some big chords and mess every so slightly with GBE. I don’t have a Peterson tuner, just a Snark, so maybe you don’t need to do this, but it improves things for me.
I do that too.
It bugs me when the the open G string and 2 fretted G notes in a G chord are off.
Same with the open D string and fretted D note in a D chord.
Open strings and the same fretted notes need to play nice together.
Sweetened takes it even further. I don’t understand or particularly care about the math. But there is some tiny error built-in with a guitars fret layout. It used to be ignored unless a musician was cursed with perfect pitch. Today, tuners are so incredibly accurate that they can address any imperfections with compensated tuning.
Btw, I’ve read perfect pitch can be a curse. It makes listening to music annoying because the listener notices the slightest error in pitch. A performance that 20,000 might applaud isn’t perfect enough for that one person.
I don’t like the sound of the open B string. It sounds harsh and shrill. It used to be worse when I was in my twenties. My high range hearing has diminished with age. I can no longer hear the high notes used in anti-loitering devices used to chase away teenagers from public areas.
I usually play a fretted B note on the G string. It’s warmer to my ear. Sometimes the fingering forces me to use the open B string.
When I was in my late thirties, there was a neighbor down the street that had some sort of motion sensor + noise maker to keep dogs off their lawn. My wife and I would take walks around the neighborhood, and I’d have to cross the street to avoid that house because of the extremely high pitched noisemaker. It was excruciating. My wife couldn’t hear it at all!!
Now 61, I wonder if I can still hear that pitch. Probably not.
It’s rather depressing. My hearing used to be surprisingly good, given that I’d played in a lot of quite loud bands. But now it cuts off around 11 Khz. Still, there are many worse off…
I’ve noticed on The Voice the coaches will concentrate intently during the difficult notes in a song. That’s when they decide if they’ll press the button.
I usually don’t listen that carefully to the singer and the accompaniment. I prefer not to hear any dissonance in the pitches. I want to enjoy the performance. There is a point where the pitch problem can’t be ignored. American Idol loves featuring that.
I don’t have perfect pitch. It’s relative between two notes. They create a 3rd dissonant note. Humans can ignore it unless it’s more than 10 to 15 cents off.
It’s the same as the open D string and fretted D note in a D chord. You’ll hear the wha-wha sound if it’s way off. Eventually the tuning gets close enough that you no longer hear the low frequency dissonance.
I’ve got pretty good pitch memory. If there’s a song I’ve heard before, it plays back in my head in the right pitch, even if I haven’t heard it for a very long time. If I dig it up and play it, my memory was almost always correct.
I used to work with a singer who had perfect pitch. She claimed there are 50 ‘microtones’ between each half step. I spent a lot of time tuning up, even when things sounded fine to me.