"Ask Bud!"

Question:

What is happening when you are playing along and you hit 2 or 3 pedals and knee lever combinations at the same fret, and by the time the 3rd one engages, the guitar sounds somewhat out of tune? But then to fix it, you just release all the pedals and knees and the guitar springs back in tune again? It seems that the chords you are getting from the changes on the first 2 combos are in tune fine, but the 3rd or even 4th one sounds out? It does not matter what combinations of pedals and knees are being used. If I have 3 groups of combinations, it does not seem to matter what order I play the 3 groups in, the 3d group sounds out of tune, (no matter which group it is). Wouldn't the sequence reflect that if it was a tempering issue?

Answer:

What you have described is a result of the fact that you can never tune all of the possible chord combinations so that they are in tune. It is actually impossible.

So, you have to compromise and temper your tuning to produce the best result for you.

For the problem you have described, the chord combos do not matter. Anytime you implement a change in chords (using the pedals and/or knee levers), which requires the root note for that particular chord to be on another string, you will have at least one string out of tune in that new chord.

Example: The E string on the E9 is your root note. When you push the first 2 pedals down, the chord changes to A6. Your E string is no longer your root note. A is now your root note. Every time you change your root note to another string, at least one string in that particular chord will be out of tune. This is because you play a tempered tuning. Unless you can temper all of your pedal and knee lever combinations when you tune them, you will have the same problem on all chords. This is where compensators come into play.

Remember that G# is not the same as Ab. It depends upon which chord you are playing whether you playing a G# note or an Ab note in that particular chord.

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