Members tdcarlson Posted October 14, 2007 Members Share Posted October 14, 2007 Just bought a Baby Taylor a couple days ago and it will not stay tuned. Some chords will sound perfect while others sound horrendously out of tune. This is particularly noticeable when messing with basic open chords. Any help would be appreciated. Love the guitar but this issue is making me want to return it. Tyler Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members brahmz118 Posted October 14, 2007 Members Share Posted October 14, 2007 Just bought a Baby Taylor a couple days ago and it will not stay tuned. Some chords will sound perfect while others sound horrendously out of tune. This is particularly noticeable when messing with basic open chords. Any help would be appreciated. Love the guitar but this issue is making me want to return it. Tyler Unfortunately my personal experience is the same as yours, which is why I got rid of mine. I've heard others claim that their Baby Taylors had good / excellent intonation, with light strings at standard tuning, but every single BT I've had in my hands would not intonate well. You will get a slight improvement in intonation if you use medium gauge strings or tune up to standard F or F# tuning, but I don't think it is worth putting the guitar at risk due to the higher tension. Otherwise, just try to fret as lightly as possible, and try to find a compromise tuning that suits the keys you play in the most. Sorry, wish I had better advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Fred Fartboski Posted October 14, 2007 Members Share Posted October 14, 2007 Baby Taylor Wont Stay In Tune!? Throw the Baby out with the bathwater! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members min7b5 Posted October 14, 2007 Members Share Posted October 14, 2007 Did you stretch the strings? A lot of time new guitars were strung up on the fly and they didn't take the time to stetch them. Baby Taylors have amazingly good intonation for a small guitar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members happy-man Posted October 15, 2007 Members Share Posted October 15, 2007 If the strings are too high at the nut, fretting in the first few frets will pull them sharp. I don't know if the nut height is the same on a small guitar like the Baby, but look at the sick guitar sticky to see what I'm talking about. I've had to lower the nut on the last three guitars I've purchased because of that issue. Small scale guitars will tend to have more intonation issues. I've experienced this looking at ukuleles. I've not personally played a very small scale steel string guitar whose intonation I could live with (like the Baby Taylor or that little Martin). I've only tried them in stores. If I simply had to have a guitar that small I think I'd go with a nylon string guitar. Scott O Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vasco Posted October 15, 2007 Members Share Posted October 15, 2007 Just bought a Baby Taylor a couple days ago and it will not stay tuned. Some chords will sound perfect while others sound horrendously out of tune. This is particularly noticeable when messing with basic open chords. Any help would be appreciated. Love the guitar but this issue is making me want to return it. Tyler Wish I could help. : (Having owned a BT for a number of years, I too struggled to keep that sucker in tune. Intonation was sketchy as well and open tunings drove me crazy... Eventually, I stopped trying to 'fix' it and wound up selling it on ebay around Christmas time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members phil_harmonic Posted October 15, 2007 Members Share Posted October 15, 2007 FWIW, and that ain't much, I recently bought a travel guitar. I went to GC specifically to get a Baby Taylor and walked out with a Little Martin, which sounded way better to me than the Baby Taylor. Being a Taylorite, I was surprised. The LM has medium gauge strings and produced a lot more bass. In the end, I just did not like playing on a tiny guitar (small size makes it hard to play IMO and the tone isnt to die for either), so I took it back. Good luck, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members totamus Posted October 16, 2007 Members Share Posted October 16, 2007 I have a Baby Taylor and my GF has a Little Martin. Both sound good, but I would give MArtin better marks all the way around. I have always struggled to keep the Baby Taylor tuned and find I tune it slightly differently depending on wether I am playing near the nut, mid neck or towards the body. I used to think it was because of the short scale and the resulting low string tension (easy to play but tuning changes if you press the strings too hard). I try to play with a light touch, but that doesn't seem to be the answer. I was very surprised when I played my GFs Martin. Same scale, but the tuning holds true. So much for the short scale, light touch theory. Anyone wanna buy a nice used BT? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members min7b5 Posted October 16, 2007 Members Share Posted October 16, 2007 I have two Baby Taylors and two Little Martins. I think I like the tone of the Martin more, but frankly I Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DonK Posted October 16, 2007 Members Share Posted October 16, 2007 I have a BT, and while I can keep it in tune pretty well, I agree that it takes a bit more work than for what I'd call a standard-scale guitar (anything between 24.75" and 25.5" scale length). When I first got the guitar it seemed to stay in tune perfectly. After I had it for awhile (and, I assume, after it had adjusted to the humidity in my house), I noticed it seemed to be a bit tough to get it to intonate well enough to at least get all the conventional open chords to sound in-tune. It seemed to me that the guitar was extraordinarily sensitive to action-related changes, especially neck bow. I took pains to get the action back to the way it was new, and it seems to be pretty stable now. I had to adjust the truss rod to get back to an almost perfectly straight neck, and I also had to take a little off the saddle (to compensate for the almost imperceptible but inevitable initial bellying of the bridge - like I said, I think it's really sensitive to even minor changes). I know that Taylor originally intended for the guitar to be tuned to F, and that's how it was originally advertised. I think it was at least a year after the guitar was introduced before Taylor began shipping it in standard tuning (and promoting it as meant to be tuned that way). I don't know if slight decrease from dropping down a half-step from the tuning the guitar was presumably designed for is a factor in the tuning stability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members guitarcapo Posted October 16, 2007 Members Share Posted October 16, 2007 Don't give up on the guitar. Try this first: In my opinion a baby Taylor has too short of a scale length to intonate well with standard guage strings and in standard tuning. I thank God this is true. Because a Baby Taylor strung with your typical light guage acoustic strings and tuned to standard tuning sounds like {censored}. The bass notes sound like a "thunk" boxy sound. It's a shame people expect this tiny guitar to perform like standard guitars in a way its not shaped to do. The answer? Get extremely light guage strings like extra lights and tune the entire guitar up a few steps to maybe F# or G. The notes will rip out of there with bright clarity and the intonation will be way better. The guitar becomes a whole new instrument. Not some lame compromise in sound quality you have to tolerate for portability, but a true unique instrument with its own undeniable merits you can use in your arsenal of sounds. Like a 6 string baritone steel string ukelele. You'll find yourself actually using the thing for recording when you need a unique sound to mix in. Guitar parts you would normally use a capoed guitar for will sound better on the Taylor in standard tuning. Try it and see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members FrankieSixxxgun Posted October 16, 2007 Members Share Posted October 16, 2007 Take it to a luthier and get him/her to file you a new saddle. Should correct the intonation problem and not be that expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members happy-man Posted October 16, 2007 Members Share Posted October 16, 2007 reading these other suggestions, if it were me I'd probably try tuning it higher before giving up on it. When I first got my soprano ukulele I tried lowering the 4th string. A soprano uke is usually tuned like a guitar capoed on the 5th fret, but the 4th string is up an octave. One can replace the 4th string with a thicker one and tune it guitar like. I tried this - yuk. The super short scale of the thing is really only conducive to higher tuning. Scott O Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members abi.m Posted April 14, 2013 Members Share Posted April 14, 2013 never had that problem with my baby taylor, but mines from 1995. It's my epiphones that won't stay in tune. If it's a recent purchase, i'd contact the manufacturer as you are under warranty. I love mine because it locks in tune, and stays that way, even in a soft case ! I have a dreadnought 12 string epiphone that the minute you tune it , it creeps out back out of tune. I spend more time tuning the thing than playing , so i end up playing my baby taylor. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members FretFiend. Posted April 15, 2013 Members Share Posted April 15, 2013 I'm thinking that the original poster got this problem fixed not too long after this thread died... about six years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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