What’s the Best Way to Tune Up, with the Buzz Feiten Intonation System?
When you have the Buzz Feiten Intonation System installed on a guitar or a tapping instrument, your playing will sound more ‘in tune’ than on a normal guitar. But does it require some special way of tuning up? Not really. Of course, the better you tune up, the better you will sound. However, the Feiten system is installed by making small adjustments to string length at both ends of the strings. On one end, the nut (or zero fret) is moved slightly. On the other end, the string saddles are adjusted to +/- a few cents here and +/- a few cents there. The result is kind of like the ’stretch tuning’ commonly used on pianos to make them sound more ‘in tune’ to our ears. Pianos have used this advanced ’stretch tuning’ system for 700 years. But guitars never had such an adjusted tuning until Buzz Feiten, a southern California studio musician, developed the system. A guitar has to have adjustments in two dimensions. Adjustments *along* the length of the string, and adjustments *across* the strin