My guitar teacher has the most sensitive ears. If my guitar is like 3 cents out of tune he makes me tune it up. Of course this is a good thing, but a bit annyoing at times. At least my guitar stays in tune the whole lesson.
I do understand him though. If he was listening to out of of tune guitars all day he wouldn't stand his job for any long time.
"Talent is luck. The important thing in life is courage."
Wes: Of course, I know all about setting intonation, that's why I mentioned the guitar being set up perfectly. :)
Then you also know that intonation and tuning is best checked between series of fretted notes, because open strings very often are in error due to nut issues. I may have missed it, but don't think you've addressed this. Try using a metered, precision tuner and doing intonation adjustments by comparing fretted pairs such as 2nd and 14th, fifth and 17th ... This removes common nut issues than plague even pricy guitars. After this, if one finds open and 12th intonation issue, this it's time to have the nut set up properly.
-=tension & release=-
i wonder how many people would be in an audience at a show and say "wow that was a great solo, but the 4th note was juuuuuust so slightly sharp." I wouldn't. Unless you have freaky ears, as some do, you won't notice some notes being a little off. i tune using either the Boss TU80 or an Intellitouch tuner. The Boss is more accurate, as the Intellitouch sometimes tells me it's in tune, but when i play a chord it's not. this happens only on electrics, strangely. on my acoustics it sounds great everytime.
i have setup my electrics using Wes's method. then, i took it to a tech asking him to check the intonation so i could judge myself. he said it was slightly sharp, but not enough to warrant any adjustment, so i left it. sounds good to me.
didn't hendrix play out of tune quite a bit?
