So why not let Tom Anderson and Tempered Tuning spoil your life too". As Tom himself says, "it changed my life." It spoils you and you want every guitar you play to tune like this. In fact, if you don't listen extremely carefully you may think that it is perfect - however, nothing is perfect and we figure if a normal guitar is approximately 80% in tune then Tempered Tuning is about 95% in tune.Įvery player here at Anderson is now using Tempered Tuning and is completely convinced that it is a marked improvement. When you listen very carefully you can hear little to no out of tune notes in chords and very little to no beating. Tempered tuning is primarily a visually undetectable structural neck change in combination with slightly altered bridge intonation offsets. Does this sound familiar? So for the sake of illustration, let's say that a regular guitar plays about 80% in tune. Go up the neck and play a D shape on the 9th fret(an A chord) and it really beats. I should have picked up a Cobra S model that I tried out back around 2002-2003 - very cool model in that the Cobras were 24 3/4' scale, mahogany bodies and mahogany necks but I stuck with a PRS. G may sound pretty good but an E chord's G# note is very off. Great guitars actually though Anderson is the only one of the boutique builders that I neve wound up owning during my 'collecting' years of the 2000s. For instance, play a C chord and the 3rd might sound sharp. When we intonate and tune a normal guitar, even when using a very accurate tuner, we find that chords, especially, don't sound very in tune. "This Buzz Feiten designed tempered tuning system allows our guitars to play more in tune than you have ever heard before!Īs we all have experienced, a guitar is not an instrument that can play perfectly in tune. This is from the Anderson website about the tuning, which won't sit well with the straight up 440 crowd (of which I am definitely NOT part of. I work with a lot of studio guys who use Anderson guitars with the Feiten tuning. When you look at all of the classic music in all of the genres that has been done over the years using standard off the rack instruments, all of these options shouldn't matter much if you've got the gift. Of course these are my own personal preferences. I wish my Clapton had a neck like the SRV Strat!!!!! My advice is to spend a few afternoons at a Guitar Center or Sam Ash playing all of the necks and finding out which one you like. I'll probably replace the frets they're the smaller vintage ones and it's tougher to bend notes on them. My hand would start to cramp up and get sore in the palm area after a while. It was the same dimensions as an old Strat neck (I measured both personally) except it was thinner front to back, which made it feel wider. It was a nice guitar but I could not get used to the neck. My personal neck preference is for as fat as they come with big frets. I think their combination of a Tele style guitar with a vibrato tailpiece like a Strat is a nice option. The one time I played an Anderson I was pretty impressed with its virtues. I had heard a lot about the Feiten tuning system. If I won the lottery tomorrow I know what I'd buy.