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Buzz Feiten Tuning System


Reugelith

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I am a beginner so I will appreciate your help:

 

Can I remove the Buzz Feiten Tuning System from a Washburn guitar Parallaxe PXL10-WA, to install a roller bridge and another nut, without major modifications or damage in the nut slot or fingerboard?

 

 

 

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I love the BF tuning system and wouldn't mess with it.

 

As a beginner you're going to be squeezing notes sharp all over the place anyway, so that's the weakest link in the intonation chain. Once you get that nailed you'll be in a position to make your own mind up about the BF tuning.

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I love the BF tuning system and wouldn't mess with it.

 

As a beginner you're going to be squeezing notes sharp all over the place anyway, so that's the weakest link in the intonation chain. Once you get that nailed you'll be in a position to make your own mind up about the BF tuning.

 

 

This man speaks the truth. Listen to him.

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I've replaced the nuts on two Washburn BF equipped guitars without any problems. The Buzz Feiten system has more to do with fret placement at the first fret than anything. As long as a replacement nut is properly aligned it shouldn't change anything.

 

If memory serves, the BF system requires the nut moved ahead to flatten the the first fret as well as intonation tweaks at the bridge. The nut is otherwise stock. If you simply replace the nut, the intonation will remain unaltered. Might be different now.

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The fretboard is shortened to install the BF system. Going back to a normal nut and getting the guitar to play right isn't going to work out. You'll have all the notes in the first position playing flat.

 

A roller nut may work out OK because those too usually need the fretboard shortened to get the roller lined up where the inside edge of the nut used to be.

 

I do know you can find out exactly how much of the fretboard gets removed installing both. I've Goggled it up in the past installing each separately but I've never gone from one to the other, but I am considering doing something similar. (Buzz Feiten offered me a job to be a local installer for their nuts years ago but when I added up the cost of what they charge for the nut and what you can realistically make installing one it wasn't worth my while)

 

I have an old Strat at home I installed an LSR roller bridge on it. I've kicked myself in the butt since the day I installed that stupid thing. I have another type of roller bridge which uses a single shaft I though I'd try but I'm not real sure that one would sound any better and I'd likely have to trim even more of the fretboard off to get it installed. Its also higher which means a deeper route below the fretboard.

 

I thought I'd try cutting an L shaped nut out of bone or brass that would fill the fretboard back in and I can get my original tones back which used to be very good.

 

I don't blame you for wanting to dump that nut however. It can fix the issues a guitar has playing in tune across the fretboard, but you do need to realize, most other players out there have normal nuts and even though you may be in tune with yourself or a piano, it doesn't mean that instrument is going to play in tune with other players normal guitars. Yes it may be they who are slightly off, but the chances of you getting them to trim their fretboard down with an irreversible mod like that aren't going to happen.

 

I had about 6 of those Earvana nuts which do the same thing as the FB, except you didn't have to use a strobe tuner and tune them at negative and positive percentages. What a pain in the ass that is. You can tune the Earvana to regular pitch and get the same kinds of string compensation. I used those things for 2 years and they sounded fine solo or on the same recordings but when you played with other guitarists with normal nuts it was major sour grapes. I did it both ways, my buddy had some too and I couldn't get the flat nuts to sound right without allot of string beating compensated.

 

If all manufacturers adopted those nuts that would be one thing, but there aren't many using them so its one case where the majority rules.

 

My best suggestion is, if you use that guitar in a three piece band or with a keyboard player you'll be OK if you use the right gauge of strings. If you're working with other guitarists who don't have compensated nuts the instrument is pretty useless playing with other musicians in tune so you'll have to decide if its worth it or not. Most guitarists develop the left hand enough where they compensate for sour notes just by pressing the strings harder so the bend at the frets and that surely sounds good on most recordings you hear. I'm not sure you'll find any benefits moving to a roller nut either. If you use a whammy a lot it might help but you can get the same benefits by using graphite grease on your current nut slots and not have to jack with modding that may or may not sound good.

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I have read about detractors of the system; some may have baised opinions probably; some others are knowledgeable. I want information before I buy the guitar and I want to avoid do something wrong.

 

I have a Strat with the Buzz Feiten tuning system. The bridge setup is part of it, as is the nut positioning. If you mess with one end but not the other, you could potentially have intonation problems. IMHO, it would be best to leave the guitar alone (I LOVE the improved intonation of the Buzz Feiten system), or, if you absolutely have to have it modified, get a experienced tech or luthier to do it.

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If you're working with other guitarists who don't have compensated nuts the instrument is pretty useless playing with other musicians in tune so you'll have to decide if its worth it or not.

I'm really picky about tuning and I've never found this to be true. My guitar sounds just right in any context where the other instruments are in tune, no matter what tuning method they use. It's rare that I encounter another guitarist that isn't badly out of tune compared to all known tuning methods on earth.

 

I also think it's crazy to sacrifice the benefits that the improved method provides just for some lowest common denominator like "it's too hard to have a shelf nut installed".

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I'm really picky about tuning and I've never found this to be true. My guitar sounds just right in any context where the other instruments are in tune, no matter what tuning method they use. It's rare that I encounter another guitarist that isn't badly out of tune compared to all known tuning methods on earth.

 

I also think it's crazy to sacrifice the benefits that the improved method provides just for some lowest common denominator like "it's too hard to have a shelf nut installed".

 

I didn't have too many issues playing live. I could block my ears from hearing the pitch discrepancies of uncompensated instruments performing live because you hear your own amp more then theirs. Its not so easy to ignore on a recording when you have the two guitars at equal volumes in a mix on a recording. At that point it doesn't matter why the two have pitch variations, they just do.

 

Its not like they are off by allot either, it's all microtonal stuff that is very mild. Its just enough to to drive you our ears nuts trying to figure out what the problem is with notes not being tuned spot on. It actually took me a year using the compensated nuts to zero in on the exact problems it caused. I could do recordings with both guitars having compensated nuts and it sounded fine. Getting an uncompensated bass guitar to sound good wasn't too difficult.

 

When I'd record tracks, one with and one without compensation the problems started. If I tracked with a compensated nut then added leads later I could get the lead in tune within a narrow range on the fret board with the first guitar. But if I went from say the 12th fret to the first few frets it sounded sour. Then If I tuned the lead guitar so it sounded good on the lower frets and played up top, those notes sounded sour.

 

 

It wasn't just the pitch that was affected, it was how the string tone/brightness was affected, especially when you have driven tones dialed up. When one guitar has strings being bent more to obtain pitch in the lower positions it produces different frequency responses, so getting a match between the two is nearly impossible. Again, these are very small variations and most people probably wouldn't notice them unless they did allot of recording and really focused on it closely.

 

I eventually gave up on compensated nuts and reinstalled normal flat nuts and never looked back. The nuts and saddles only get rid of the issues at the ends of the fret board. They don't fix the intervals between frets which is the real problem. There's only one way of fixing that and its with bent frets which fix all the microtonal issues with tempered tuning and go to a true temperament system like these guitars. http://www.truetemperament.com/

 

My ears can handle the variations in tempered tuning so long as the two guitars match at both ends of the fret board. I played violin before guitar and since they are fretless I trained my ears for true temperament before moving to guitar. I can deal with both separately but combining both true and tempered tunings is too much of an annoyance for my ears.

 

If All players switched to Compensated I'd be fine with using just that system. Compensation does help and I'm all for improvement but there are so few guitarists that use the system, I find I'm better off sticking with stock nuts for what I do.

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^ ^ ^ ^

So you think all std nut guitars in std tuning have exactly the same tuning all over the fretboard? and therefore dont offend your ears. Wow.

But the BF variations against a std nut are big enough for you to notice in a mix. Wow wow.

 

The OP has not bought his 1st guitar yet and you are telling him the BF is out of tune with all non BF guitars?

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I am a beginner so I will appreciate your help:

 

Can I remove the Buzz Feiten Tuning System from a Washburn guitar Parallaxe PXL10-WA, to install a roller bridge and another nut, without major modifications or damage in the nut slot or fingerboard?

 

 

 

 

Dont get bogged down on details like that. Buy any decent quality guitar you like the look of, find a good teacher and play, as often as you can. Get a few chords under your belt and rock on.

 

Welcome to the club.

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~~

^ ^ ^ ^

So you think all std nut guitars in std tuning have exactly the same tuning all over the fretboard?

No, I'd say that's your lame attempt to bait me into defending something I didn't say.

 

What I said was "I" can get notes from two standard nuts "or" two compensated nuts to match so they don't have microtonal variances and string beats. (sour notes between the two instruments)

 

Getting a Standard "and" a Compensated nut to match exactly doesn't work well. A compensation nut attempts to get the notes closer to equal temperament and a standard nut produces normal tempered tuned notes.

 

Combine the two and you have sour notes all over the neck and there's nothing you can do about it.

 

How far off those variances are off is not allot but anyone with an experienced well trained ear can hear it easily enough to know something doesn't sound right and may think its the other guy who doesn't know how to tune his guitar right.

 

By the way I have several Earvana nuts if anyone is interested. I have no use for them any more if someone is interested in trying them out first hand just leave me a pm.

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~~

 

 

 

What I said was "I" can get notes from two standard nuts "or" two compensated nuts to match so they don't have microtonal variances and string beats. (sour notes between the two instruments)

.

 

No microtonal variances?

No, you can't.

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That's the catch. You'd need a whammy bar for string bending. I've never tried one of those guitars before so maybe some frets allow normal string bends.

 

The answer must be electronic then. Hex pickup and polyphonic intonation software perhaps.

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