Henrik Linder with weird frets.?

[bubinga5]

Anyone got any idea why his bass has these very strange frets.? 

 

Edited October 9, 2018 by bubinga5

[BreadBin]

http://www.truetemperament.com

[fretmeister]

True temperament frets.

 

Perfectly intonated across the entire board.

[fretmeister]

 

Frank Gambale is a big fan too.

[bubinga5]

Ahh ok thanks. Whats wrong with adjusting intonation from the bridge. Or is this perfection intonation.?

[fretmeister]

Perfect.

 

Straight frets simply can't be perfect intonated for the entire board.

 

Depends on how picky you are I suppose. To me it makes more sense for guitars as guitarists are usually playing more chords.

[BigRedX]

But only works if all the other instruments in your ensemble are also true temperament, otherwise some notes between the instruments will be out of tune.

[EliasMooseblaster]

OK, time for a daft question. I can see why these microtonal adjustments make the difference they do, but it looks like, if you drew a line of best fit through the frets, they'd all be more-or-less parallel.

Contrast this with the multi-scale/fanned-fret approach adopted by people like Dingwall, where none of the frets are parellel, and which presumably also helps to minimise these intonation discrepancies - or is that also try to achieve a more balanced string tension at the same time?

[chris_b]

57 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

But only works if all the other instruments in your ensemble are also true temperament, otherwise some notes between the instruments will be out of tune.

Doesn't sound like he's out of tune with the keyboard player.

[fretmeister]

9 minutes ago, chris_b said:

Doesn't sound like he's out of tune with the keyboard player.

Keys are in perfect tune.

 

Other guitars won't be.

[fretmeister]

1 hour ago, EliasMooseblaster said:

OK, time for a daft question. I can see why these microtonal adjustments make the difference they do, but it looks like, if you drew a line of best fit through the frets, they'd all be more-or-less parallel.

Contrast this with the multi-scale/fanned-fret approach adopted by people like Dingwall, where none of the frets are parellel, and which presumably also helps to minimise these intonation discrepancies - or is that also try to achieve a more balanced string tension at the same time?

Dingwalls are for tension and for longer speaking lengths on lower notes.

 

Doesn't really help with intonation as such except give greater room for error on the longer scale side - like it's easier to be in tune on a double bass than on a violin.

I suppose ideally you'd have a fan fret and then those frets would be temperament wiggly as well.

[TheGreek]

1 minute ago, fretmeister said:

like it's easier to be in tune on a double bass than on a violin.

May also explain why I struggle on my Soprano sax...that's going to be my excuse for the future anyway.

[NJE]

Henrik Linder does quite a lot of chordal stuff so I’m presuming he has noticed that the chords aren’t as spot on as they should be with other basses.

Would anyone else notice? Probably not unless your seriously analysing in a studio, but if it’s enough to make him feel better or happier with his sound then good luck to him.

[Hellzero]

You can do the same on a fretless bass, I mean always playing in perfect tune. Alain Caron can play chords perfectly in tune on fretless. I've seen him playing the chords of the tune while Mike Stern was soloing (it was the classical trio without any keyboard player). It's all about accuracy and hearing. When you play chords on a fretless, you can easily hear if they are in tune or not. Well, sorry to say it, but I can. And I also play opened strings and in the upper register (private joke).

[bubinga5]

So the hypothesis is, its a load (like string through bridges, carbon nuts,  etc blah blah) of 2 hairy danglers in the real world..

[Hellzero]

Could say so, but I'm loosing my hair. 😁

Maybe see it as a tribute to his own hair "cut". 🤣

[Sibob]

2 hours ago, fretmeister said:

Keys are in perfect tune.

 

Do you just mean intonated as ‘perfect’ as is possible within equal temperament? 

Si

Edited October 9, 2018 by Sibob

[BigRedX]

The differences in tuning are so slight between a standard fretted instrument and one with true temperament frets that unless you can guarantee you are fretting each and every note that you play without stretching the string any more than required for it to be properly stopped by the fret and only moving it in a perfect downward direction with respect to the fingerboard then you are going to negate the compensation offered by the true temperament frets.

There are problems when you try and bend strings. You are also tied in to a limited range for type and gauges of string. Also if any of the chords played are created by pressing down the same string on two different frets (such as a standard barre chord on the guitar) then the extra stretching of the string will negate the composition of true temperament frets. 

True, a standard fretted instrument in a very slight compromise in tuning, but the true temperament fretted instrument is just as compromised. The compromises are different, that is all.

[Hellzero]

You are totally right. Add to that the fact that most people can't hear a quarter tone out of tune, only a few hear an eighth tone out and even less have the perfect pitch : your answer will then be complete.

[TrevorR]

1 hour ago, bubinga5 said:

So the hypothesis is, its a load (like string through bridges, carbon nuts,  etc blah blah) of 2 hairy danglers in the real world..

Yes and no. Most ears probably wouldn’t hear it but there are frequency differences between thre notes in the even tempered scale (a harmonic compromise popularised around the time of Bach*) and the strict temperament scales. The best of classical musicians on string and brass instruments will compensate automatically. In fact with real true temperament (as opposed to True TemperamentTM - which is just a tuning “sweetening” system) you’d strictly need a differently intonated guitar for each key you might want to play in.

 

Of course, in the real world it barely makes a gnat’s crotchet of a difference. But, hey, it’s just (yikes, “just”!) the next step on from the Buzz Lightyear tuning system some folks have on their guitars, or the type of sweetening that players like James Taylor use on standard guitars. If it floats his boat...

 

*Hence his two books of piano studies written for “The Well-Tempered Klavier”

[TrevorR]

2 hours ago, Hellzero said:

And I also play opened strings and in the upper register (private joke).

She’ll be coming all the way from NYC to tell you off and give you her “Don’t Do This At The Gig” face!

[Sibob]

From the manufacturer of the frets:

"TRUE TEMPERAMENT™ does not imply Just Intonation. It is physically impossible to implement Just Intonation in more than one specific key (and its relative minor) on any instrument with only 12 intervals in the octave. (Except perhaps for computer-controlled instruments using electronically generated sounds.)

What we mean by TRUE TEMPERAMENT™ is that our fretting system will give you super-accurate intonation over the whole fingerboard in the temperament it is constructed for."

As I thought basically.

Si

[Count Bassy]

2 hours ago, Sibob said:

From the manufacturer of the frets:

"TRUE TEMPERAMENT™ does not imply Just Intonation. It is physically impossible to implement Just Intonation in more than one specific key (and its relative minor) on any instrument with only 12 intervals in the octave. (Except perhaps for computer-controlled instruments using electronically generated sounds.)

What we mean by TRUE TEMPERAMENT™ is that our fretting system will give you super-accurate intonation over the whole fingerboard in the temperament it is constructed for."

As I thought basically.

Si

So why do they call it "Temperament" when they mean "Intonation".

 

[Sibob]

9 minutes ago, Count Bassy said:

So why do they call it "Temperament" when they mean "Intonation".

 

🤷‍♂️

[TrevorR]

3 hours ago, Count Bassy said:

So why do they call it "Temperament" when they mean "Intonation".

 

Because “tempering” a scale means very slightly moving the frequency of each note in the scale... which is what their bendy frets does. So the “even tempered scale” we use in western music assigns a standard, fixed frequency of each note in the chromatic scale slightly to create a compromise that kinda sounds good and more or less in tune when playing any natural major or minor scale.