• TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
    Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
    Join free Log in
    Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.

Compensated Nut: Superfluous?

#21
landau roof said:
I always thought it would be funny if those Gibson Robot guitars made note bends impossible.
Click to expand...
no way the robot would be fast enough for that, and anyway it doesn't do anything unless the sound is switched off for tuning.

that does describe the (entirely mechanical) [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] though! it uses big springs that maintain the same string tension no matter how much you bend, or even if you twist a tuning key.
 
#22
What's the point? The best popular music in the world was made on Fender basses and Strats with bent steel, threaded saddle bridges and wonky inaccurate tremolos. Not good enough anymore. Jazz, Rock, country, any analog electric music was made like this.

Thank you midi digital music! Thank you for creating a need for perfect pitch that will make the analog world of music as dry and lifeless and inhuman as digital music is. :p

Once those you that want this snake oil put it on your bass you should next put a tremolo on so you can bend notes to give them some life. ;) I was talking with a great key player that was marveling at the chords that sound awesome on an electric guitar and sound horrible on piano: a degree of dissonance ads character to rock n roll. The tone of electric analog instruments can withstand and even thrive on a cent or two sharp or flat. I am positive that your mileage may vary on this; I just had to say it. :D.
 
#23
I just started a book (last night, in fact) called "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and why you should care)" by Ross Duffin.

I'm interested to see what thoughts he has on the topic.

The fact is, physics and the twelve tone scale are at odds with each other. Always were. Always will be. Every temperament system is a compromise - it all comes down to where you'd like your compromises to be.
 
#24
Well, you know... strange but true, but sensitivity to pitch is actually a variable in people in general. Some aren't that upset by variations in intonation, and some are extremely sensitive to it. And variations in between.

I happen to be extremely sensitive to being out of tune, one of the reasons I gave up the fretted bass and went FL. My fretted basses, for example, were always flat at the low A and B flat on the G string. And somehow the stupid things were always a bit off somewhere else on the neck. Drove me nuts really.
With the FL I'm out of tune all the time now, lol, but at least it gives me the opportunity to pull it up or down back into tune as perfectly as I can make it.

Guitars always drove me crazy in this respect. In tune on some chords and then just horrible sounding on others.

There are those True Temperament necks out nowadays, tho, which seem to offer somewhat of a solution. The ones I've heard are still a little out of tune too, but they're vastly better than the standard fretted guitars. I think they make them for basses also.

So the compensated nut idea seems to be a decent one, tho the problem is completely cured by going FL lol....

LS
 
#26
Chords are by definition out of tune on any instrument with set intonation points, like keyboards and fretted instruments.

Lo-E said:
I just started a book (last night, in fact) called "How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and why you should care)" by Ross Duffin.

I'm interested to see what thoughts he has on the topic.

The fact is, physics and the twelve tone scale are at odds with each other. Always were. Always will be. Every temperament system is a compromise - it all comes down to where you'd like your compromises to be.
Click to expand...
+1! And to expand on why, the seminal work in this area is Hemholz, "On the Sensation of Tone."

And the man who did more work on where to fit the compromises, and invented the term "1/4 comma" to talk about them, is Andreas Werckmeister, who debated with Bach about equal temperament and "shaded" temperaments.
 
#30
The evertune bridge uses a constant tension spring at each saddle to maintain constant string tension.
Springs that provide constant tension have been around for quite a while. The brush springs in large
motors and the mainsprings in clocks and watches are some examples. Unlike coil springs for example,
these springs do not increase in tension as they are extended or stressed. They have a range of travel
within which their tension will not change.

With the evertune bridge, the actual tuning is done at the saddle spring by adjusting it's tension. Then,
any variation in the string, like stretching, will have no effect on it's tension, and therefore no effect on
it's tuning. Unfortunately, it means that bending a string has no effect on pitch either. They are trying
to overcome this by placing the saddle spring adjustment very close to it's limit. At the slightest bit
of bending, the saddle is no longer free to move and then additional bending can increase the pitch.

Anyway, that's the idea. I have no idea how well it works.

I also don't know why I would really need one. Stretching strings and accidentally bumped tuning keys
are not my biggest problems.
 
#31
the idea is more for rhythm guitar or jazz guitar where you don't want any pitch variation from accidental pushing or pulling on the strings.
 
#32
Handyman said:
The fancy compensated nuts just result in different slightly out of tune compromise tuning that you get with a normal nut.

The only guitars I've heard that sound dramatically better than a plain old guitar are those crazy True Temperament things with the squiggly frets. That sort of system is really the only way to get entirely correct intonation up and down the neck on every string.

I certainly don't have a bad enough case of OCD to get one of those instruments, though . :)

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]
Click to expand...

So glad to read this. I thought everyone had been suckered. If compensated nuts, Buzz Feiten system etc are an attempt to get around the worst dissonances of equal temperament, then there's no way they can work all over the neck ... except by compensating every single fret.

I may be wrong and that's not the intent of the Buzz Feiten design (although promising things will sound more 'in tune' certainly makes it seem like that's the aim). What really irritates me though is the demo's I've seen of Buzz Feiten system basses where the player does chords all over the neck then says 'see how much better that sounds'. Complete nonsense.

I can see how these compensated nuts could be engineered to produce better compromises in the lower few frets though (compensating for the extra tension introduced by fretting a string, particularly with common chords) no problems with that at all.

In fact, I'm well aware of the problem from acoustic guitar. I find it hard to tune an acoustic so that both open E and open C chords sound in tune. The problem is the equally tempered major third ... it's just too far from the 5:4 ratio that's needed for the harmonics of the two notes to align and dissonance eliminated. So I finish up tuning the open E chord with a major third that sounds in tune to my ears (which is most likely not equal temperament) and then the open C sounds awful because the fifth is way off.

If these systems produce a compromise that tackles that problem I'm all for it. But don't expect me to buy into that solving the same problem all the way up the neck. Parallel frets all the way up the neck means your are playing an equal-tempered instrument, and intervals other than fifths and octaves are a compromise. (Actually fifths are as well, but they're so close it would take a fine ear to notice).
 
#33
Just read this on the Earvana site:

Our nut is designed around equal temperament. You must accept this compromise ...
Click to expand...

I'm guessing, reading that, that the Buzz Feiten system may be done on the same principles.

That doesn't change my assertion that when playing chords all the way up the neck, the compensated nut will make no discernible difference. The strings had better be tuned to equal temperament pitches (BF tuning system not withstanding) when playing at fret postions 5 7, 12 whatever, otherwise you're in a mess. Buzz Feiten and other compensation systems may help with the exaggerated effects of extra fretting tension when playing low down, maybe frets 3-4 to open strings, but they're not going to make any difference high up.

Apologies, but I just saw two youtube demos making assertions to the contrary, hence the rant.
 
#34
Turnaround said:
Can you show an example? I don't recall seeing a compensated nut on a stock Gibson.
Click to expand...
They never advertise it. And they let Buzz Feiten have his patent with no challenge. But on especially older instruments, measure crown-to-crown the distance from the 12th to the 13th frets with a ruler that gets into the hundredths or thousandths. Double that measurement. Then measure from the crown of the first fret back to the nut. You will most likely see that the measurement is not to the edge of the nut, but somewhere in back of the edge of the nut. It was that way on my '79 Les Paul, it's that way on my J-45, and it is that way on several other Gibson instruments I have played over the years.

On my custom P/J bass, I have individual shims on the nut, in the manner of Stephen Delft, to compensate it so the string stretch does not pull the lower fretted notes sharp. As with bridge intonation, the E string needed the most, and the G string didn't need any.

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f57/different-custom-p-style-bass-755914/

And yes, fretted instruments and keyboards are most often set up for equal temperament. This means that the common 4ths and 5th, (tuning harmonics, power chords, etc.) will never be perfect, and major thirds (like the F# on the high E string for a guitar player) will always wobble and be too "bright." This is the price musicians pay for being able to play in any key with any combination of set intonation instruments.
 
#37
Scott in Dallas said:
The point of the compensated nut is to fudge certain notes a few cents so that all open chords sound good. My Taylor has no compensated nut, and all open chords sound great, so it's likely not needed on most instruments, and it's completely useless on a bass since nobody plays open chords at that range.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. It can be used for that, but on my bass, the nut shims, Steven Delft style, are used so that each fret "zeros" out on an equal temperament tuner, because I play with a variety of groups including keys, other guitars, strings, horns, etc., and I need to be able to play with all of them, not just favored open chords.
 
#38
iiipopes said:
Not necessarily. It can be used for that, but on my bass, the nut shims, Steven Delft style, are used so that each fret "zeros" out on an equal temperament tuner, because I play with a variety of groups including keys, other guitars, strings, horns, etc., and I need to be able to play with all of them, not just favored open chords.
Click to expand...

There's nothing wrong with having a compensated nut, but nothing that you said goes against my post that you quoted.

Your compensated nut will indeed be closer to tune than an instrument without, but again, you aren't playing open chords so the difference in a band setting is completely inaudible, as there are no coinciding partials, which is the "beat" of two out of tune notes multiplied by a chord of three or more notes. Even if we were to assume that you were playing open chords on a bass, the partials that exist are vibrating at half what they are for the guitar, so the bass is simply not the problem.

And unless I'm wildly misunderstanding something, each fret will not zero out. Ever. As you explained in an earlier post, everything's a compromise. What the compensated nuts do is move the compromises to places where there are less common chords, and are therefore less likely to be heard.
 
#39
Scott in Dallas said:
There's nothing wrong with having a compensated nut, but nothing that you said goes against my post that you quoted.

Your compensated nut will indeed be closer to tune than an instrument without, but again, you aren't playing open chords so the difference in a band setting is completely inaudible, as there are no coinciding partials, which is the "beat" of two out of tune notes multiplied by a chord of three or more notes. Even if we were to assume that you were playing open chords on a bass, the partials that exist are vibrating at half what they are for the guitar, so the bass is simply not the problem.

And unless I'm wildly misunderstanding something, each fret will not zero out. Ever. As you explained in an earlier post, everything's a compromise. What the compensated nuts do is move the compromises to places where there are less common chords, and are therefore less likely to be heard.
Click to expand...
I suggest you read, for further information on how temperaments work, and how psychoacoustic phenomena work in general, the seminal work on the project, On the Sensation of Tone, by Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz, 1863, which I have read in first edition when I was in college in the early '80's.

No, I agree, no physical system is perfect. I could go on and completely use up all the available bandwidth explaining how all the different systems work, from Buzz Feiten, to Gibson, to Earvana, to Delft, to the Renaissance "mean tone" frets, to the various folks who place staggered pieces of frets up and down the fretboard to achieve their variety of temperament. And then there's all the keyboard temperaments: equal, meantone, quarter-comma, the various Werkmeister and Young temperaments, ad infinitum, ad nauseaum.

Now, how about adding to that all of the inherent intonation quirks that various rock-n-roll band, concert band, jazz band and orchestral instruments have that must be accommodated, from flat 5th partials on most brass; sharp 6th partials on euphoniums, throat tones on clarinets that are never in tune, sharp A's on saxophones, etc., when those who play those instruments don't necessarily adjust themselves in the mix.

And finally, how to split the difference on instruments, like old pianos, that are just plain out of tune.

No, of course nothing is perfect. But there is a lot more to it than the summary comments that have been made so far. And I have done for my playing what works so I can do my job properly with whatever ensemble I'm in. Do I tweak tunings? Yes. Do I listen for voices and orchestral strings that tune "pure" instead of tempered? Yes. And so it goes. Even if the bass is not the problem. The bass usually gets blamed for it because of a combination of either the conductor or the egos of the other players pointing fingers. So the bass has it doubly hard.

So I have my shims set so I have a only a minimum of amount of adjustment I have to do to accommodate all the above, still provide a good foundation, and more.

Now, where was that Cowboy open C chord?
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom
Back