source file: m1401.txt
Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 15:35:57 -0400 (EDT)

Subject: Re: Buzz Feiten's tuning

From: Steven  Rezsutek <steven.rezsutek@hq.nasa.gov>

mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison) writes: 

> >In the June 98 issue of Guitar Player, on p86, there's a huge ad for
> >guitars using the new Buzz Feiten system for intonation. What makes me a
> >bit ill is 2 things: one, as far as I can tell, after playing guitar for
> >33 years, if the guitar keeps the same 12 note/octave eq temp
> >arrangement,

>    I guess I'll ask the obvious question:  What aspects of intonation does
> the Buzz Feiten system address if not microtonality?  Is its purpose
> greater accuracy to 12TET (in the spirit of moveable bridges and such)?

I, too, am curious about the system.  With what little I understand
of such things at the moment, and from the scanty info that I've 
seen in the mags, part of it sounds to me like a sort of retrofitted 
string compensation, like Mark Rankin describes (he calls it Gilbert
Scaling in the instruction sheet for the removable fingerboard) and
that I've seen mentioned in the LMI catalog.

That might explain moving the nut closer to the bridge by a calculated
amount, but I'm lost as to the importance of the "special frequencies"
that one is supposed to tune to, if I'm reading the ad copy right.

This is all just conjecture on my part of course.  I'd love to get 
the "real" scoop, though.  I'd thought about getting a hold of the
Washburn(?) video, but there's no guanantee it would have any real
info, and I don't have a VCR anyhow (yeah, yeah, call me a Luddite :-)

Steve