Interesting.
I wasn’t endorsing them, I was just saying they exist.
I wasn’t really aware of these differences, I don’t know much about TT and haven’t really read any of their marketing. I was just going from the idea that each fretted note has a compensated scale length, so each note is intonated individually, like a piano.
I couldn’t find a good source that explains the differences. Can you point me in the right direction or give a quick summary?
I believe on a piano each key is intonated to sound about the same as any other key, but I know that in the studio and for some concerts, pianos can be tuned to sweeten whatever keys are going to be featured.
There’s nothing stopping the TT company from redesigning the frets to match the intonation of a piano, right? It’s a choice to sweeten some keys, and obviously you can’t sweeten one without souring another.
Hopefully it’s obvious to anyone buying it that TT is designed for standard tuning. If you’re buying one of these you probably have multiple guitars so it’s not really a big deal that this one is limited to standard. I have several guitars and rarely change tunings on them, unless maybe going to drop D on a hard tail sometimes.
The technique problem isn’t huge: good guitarists don’t regularly death grip their notes or strike the strings too hard unless they’re doing it intentionally. Also neither is the tuning stability problem. In the studio you’ll retune as needed. Not many people play these on stage because if you’re the only one with TT in a rock band context you’ll sound off compared to everyone else.
I don’t really care either way, because my technique is horrible and I suck. Also imperfect intonation doesn’t really bother me, I barely notice it.