VH: Why you're out of tune

[PsychoCid]

Ever try to play along with Van Halen records?

You've probably noticed your guitar sounds pretty awful compared to Ed's

That's because Ed tuned by ear until Sammy came along. Not only was he not in Eb proper but each string was sweetened in it's own right.

https://www.vhlinks.com/vbforums/thread ... -reference

In general I just tune to straight Eb, but then I detune the B string a few cents so it doesn't clash so bad with the G.

[Rollin Hand]

And then there was the other issue: Ed's hands could crush walnuts so the sheer pressure of his fretting threw things "out".

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/tom-we ... -interview

[PsychoCid]

And then there was the other issue: Ed's hands could crush walnuts so the sheer pressure of his fretting threw things "out".

https://www.guitarworld.com/news/tom-we ... -interview

Plus he was all drugged up when he was young. Yeah that'll give you a hell of a death grip on a guitar. LOL.

I don't know why he liked those small vintage frets in his later years. They just go right out of tune for me. But for some reason the giant frets that give me a scalloped feel, actually /prevent/ me from pressing too hard.

I think because I can actually tell the diff with big frets. Whereas tiny frets, I touch the wood no matter what I do, so I can't really feel the diff between hard and soft grip.

[Chocol8]

If you look at the measured tunings, they are mostly sharp which would make sense if he was pushing hard. In that case the important part would be the difference between strings and not the total offset, which you could likely do better by tuning and setting up the guitar to your own left hand style.

Another possibility for anything from that era is that the album track is a little fast or slow and that’s why all the strings measure a bit sharp or the all measure a bit flat depending on the song. I highly doubt EVH was intentionally selecting a different tuning for each song.

[Rollin Hand]

He wasn't. He just told Mike to tune to him.

Had to be hard on Dave.

[PsychoCid]

He wasn't. He just told Mike to tune to him.

Had to be hard on Dave.

Hehe yeah Ed did what I used to do -- I just tuned by ear to whenever it sounded good. Sometimes I was up, sometimes I was down, but I was always in tune with myself.

Far as I've heard, it worked great for Dave cause he wasn't a properly trained singer anyway.

It was Sammy, who actually was pitch trained, that needed Eddie to be in a proper tune.

[Rollin Hand]

He wasn't. He just told Mike to tune to him.

Had to be hard on Dave.

Hehe yeah Ed did what I used to do -- I just tuned by ear to whenever it sounded good. Sometimes I was up, sometimes I was down, but I was always in tune with myself.

Far as I've heard, it worked great for Dave cause he wasn't a properly trained singer anyway.

It was Sammy, who actually was pitch trained, that needed Eddie to be in a proper tune.

Also, as far as I know you can't really tune keyboards to the key of "whatever Ed is tuned to."

[PsychoCid]

He wasn't. He just told Mike to tune to him.

Had to be hard on Dave.

Hehe yeah Ed did what I used to do -- I just tuned by ear to whenever it sounded good. Sometimes I was up, sometimes I was down, but I was always in tune with myself.

Far as I've heard, it worked great for Dave cause he wasn't a properly trained singer anyway.

It was Sammy, who actually was pitch trained, that needed Eddie to be in a proper tune.

Also, as far as I know you can't really tune keyboards to the key of "whatever Ed is tuned to."

LOL not back then anyway

Today it'd probably be easy enough to set each key to whatever tone you want