The ShadowMusic Web Community

I was just in a site on Youtube about how to tune your guitar(I know after forty odd years I should know how) and
this guy for demonstration purposes had the guitar lying flat on a table. He said on no circumstances should you tune your guitar this way as this was because as soon as you pick it up to play it'll be out of tune again, so you must only tune your guitar when its sitting on your knee or however you play it.
I've never heard of this and fail to see how it'd affect the tuning in this way
Anybody any comments on this one???
Hugh.

I read this somewhere years ago, but I don't know if it does make any difference.
The best way to find out is tune the guitar to perfect pitch while flat on its back with a decent tuner and then turn it to the correct playing position and see if it has changed on the tuner slightly.
In the old days before tuners we wouldn't have known the difference, tuners have made us too fussy. You can see on the tuner if it is slightly out but would never tell by ear.

I haven't seen the clip, but if the the neck is supported, or the heastock is touching the table so that there's any sort of pressure on the neck due to the weight of the body pushing against it then I can understand it. If you pull on a string and look at the end of the headstock, you'll be surprised how much it can move. When I'm setting intonation for example, I lay the guitar on the mat on my bench, but let the neck hang off the edge so that it's in it's 'natural' position (relative to the body), and not resting on anything or being influenced by any other forces. I assume that's probably what the demo clip is getting at.

Chas.

Yes I suppose that makes sense of it. If for instance you hit the bottom e string and let the note ring, then bend the first or second string up a semitone or tone, it'll change the pitch of the bottom string such is the weakness of the neck. Not that I had any notion of tuning the guitar this way, but I just wondered about the statement the guy made.

It's more the reaction of the trem than 'weakness of the neck' that would change the pitch when string bending.

It helps if you don't have a de-tuner on yer guitar...

signed Hardtail

Risky wrote:At a recent Hankies meeting I tuned my Burns 40th Anniversary lying flat in it's case. Just before my 'turn', I picked up the guitar and re-checked the tuning only to find most of the strings were out. I put this down to the weight of the trem mechanism. I guess the lesson is to always tune your guitar in the position in which you are going to play it.

Roger Bayliss sabotaged it.

Phil I can confirm the experience you had with tuning your Burns whilst laid flat.
I did the same thing some years ago and after picking it up to play found that it was out of tune. As you said it's the trem plate that causes the problem.