[dahart]

Many musicians can readily confirm that the difference between temperaments can be felt and heard by trained ears. A guitar tuned to equal temperament has major thirds that warble audibly. It feels different when you use just intonation, which isn’t generally possible on a guitar.

[52-6F-62]

Indeed. But this is the guitar's design! Fixed temperament. There are many variations and other instruments that explicitly make that aspect of the instrument variable. There are even branches off of Spanish guitar design that use movable frets for that reason.

But fixed temperament and that warble/etc IS guitar.

[dahart]

Mmm no, that’s getting history and the causal relationships a bit backward. The early guitars, like their predecessors (lutes), all had moveable frets, and their designers were trying to figure out how to fret various other tuning systems before 12-TET became the standard:

https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iuswrrest/api/core/bitstreams/5c...

Some lute players were arguing in favor of equal temperament, and others were arguing against. It took a long time, but equal temperament eventually won, and the guitar we have today is the result of European music settling on equal temperament in general, not just for lutes, but for keyboards and ensembles. The guitar is fixed and fretted for 12-TET for the same reason the piano is tuned for 12-TET, because that’s the best compromise for all musicians. Guitar wasn’t designed to add warble, it evolved along with other instruments to support enharmonic modulation, which requires allowing a little warble. If we could have guitars without the warble, we would.

[52-6F-62]

Lutes? Alright, Grokipedia. I understand the evolution of stringed instruments. But I said Spanish Guitar.

Get off it.

[dahart]

Do you understand the evolution of stringed instruments? That response totally convinces me otherwise.

Please feel free to elaborate. What about the Spanish Guitar? It came from the vihuela which came from the lute. The Spanish guitar is equal tempered because the lute went equal tempered before it. Nothing about the Spanish guitar is unique in terms of temperament.

[kjkjadksj]

Why can’t you use intonation? Isn’t that just confirming the note is the same on different strings? And also the goal of bridge adjustment?

[dahart]

For the reasons the article explains. You can use “just intonation” a bit on a guitar, but it will only work for certain chords in certain positions. BTW note that just intonation is different from string intonation - I wasn’t talking about making sure the 12th fret is the same note as the 12th fret harmonic on a single string, I was talking about the tuning system called “just intonation” that defines what certain intervals are, and allows for perfect thirds and perfect fifths in some keys. But it won’t work everywhere on a guitar. It’s not possible to get (for example) perfect fifths on all string combinations in all positions, but it is possible to tune the guitar so you have a perfect fifth when crossing 1 string while in 5th position.

The goal of regular guitar intonation and bridge adjustment is to get the guitar as close as possible to 12 tone equal temperament (TET), which is slightly ‘out of tune’ as the article describes. 12 TET is the best you can do if you want something equally close to perfect fifths (or thirds, etc.) in all positions in all keys across all string combinations; that’s what 12 TET is for, it’s designed to minimize the worse case, at the expense of losing the best case.