Sometimes a little microtonal content can make music interesting.
Who doesn't love Yoko Ono? As one of the champions of microtonal music, she was pushing the boundaries of vocal gymnastics long before Auto-Tune was invented and subsequently abused. But it has come to my attention that there are haters as well. What does this have to do with guitars? I understand the raised eyebrows, but allow me to get into the weeds a bit and eventually I'll get to that.
Western music, which is the framework for what most of us play, is based on a 12-notes-per-octave system. When we whistle a children's tune like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" or play the riff to "Crazy Train," we're pulling from the same group of notes and intervals. Outside of the Western framework is a whole other garden of musical expression where octaves are divided up into smaller subdivisions. Michael Bloomfield utilized influences from various musical traditions in his soloing. While some called it groundbreaking, others held their ears. Similarly, Hound Dog Taylor's pitch-challenged riffing isn't to everyone's taste. It all depends upon how open you are to sound as art. Personally, I dig it.
But there is another facet of intonation that has grown on me, and that is the slightly off-pitch content of the guitar in general. In a way, it's what makes the instrument so unique and wonderful. Among other reasons, the guitar relies upon a single fret position to determine pitch across six differently weighted and tensioned strings, and "perfect" intonation is not possible. Over time, guitarists learn to subconsciously vary finger pressure even within chords to "smooth out" intonation inconsistencies to their liking. This is why my first guitar teacher could play my guitar in tune, then hand it back to me, and in my hands the sound wilted.
Learning to deal with intonation on the guitar is a rite of passage that some players master better than others. The good thing is sometimes a little microtonal content can make music interesting. One of my favorite examples is the main riff in Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love." As Page drones the open 4th string against the slightly bent D note fingered on the 5th string, magic happens.
Outside of the Western framework there is a whole other garden of musical expression where octaves are divided into even more intervals.
Consider Roger McGuinn's rambling 12-string odysseys on early Byrds recordings. His jazz-influenced improvisational wanderings combined with the inherent string-to-string discrepancies built into his Rickenbacker's design gave McGuinn a signature voice. As an owner of one such instrument, I struggle with the desire to replace its 6-saddle bridge with a 12-saddle version, but worry that I'll miss that crazy Rick sound. I've built 12-string electrics that intonate as close to perfectly as one can get. They are glorious to play but have enough of that slightly microtonal signature that a less sophisticated approach renders. In the end, they're both viable methods, depending upon the music.
The Tune-o-matic bridge stands as the de facto solution to guitar intonation, but my experience is that the Tune-o-matic is just a different compromise between where your guitar is in tune, at the expense of some solid tone. I actually prefer a wraparound bridge and don't find that it impedes seasoned players at all. Similarly, there are compensated nuts that solve some intonation issues while not addressing others. I had a guitar with wavy frets that basically provided micro-adjusted fretting points for each string. When compared to a keyboard, it was quite accurate, but it sounded slightly weird to my ears—like a computer simulation of a guitar, without all the color. Open-G tuning on this instrument absolutely did not sound like Keef. I have another guitar with those wavy frets at the first and second positions, which is actually pretty useful if you need that open D chord to be more in tune.
Years ago, I was at the Lone Star Cafe in New York City, sitting, drinking, and chatting with guitarist Elliott Easton and producer Jon Tiven. On the lower level, a local band was doing a cover of the Rascals' "Good Lovin'," and I was barely paying attention. Then, as the guitarist played the little chord/riff break after the first verse, my head spun around because the slightly bent notes were exactly like the Rascals' version. "Jesus, he nailed that," I said to my companions. "Well, he should," Easton replied. "He's Gene Cornish!" The signature touch of Cornish's fingers made that song as much as anything else on the original recording. I doubt if more perfect intonation would have improved it.
There have been many inventions that seek to iron out the kinks and quirks of a guitar's limitations, but sometimes embracing them can be more satisfying. Like our friend Yoko—love them for what they are. And remember, if the grass seems greener on the other side, water your own lawn.
Boutique luthier Jol Dantzig (cofounder of Hamer Guitars) examines the potential perils of different headstock angles and the balance between performance and ease of construction.
When we think of world-champion guitar breakers, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain come to mind. But even Pete Townshend can’t hold a candle to the infamous creation known as the guitar stand. Quite possibly responsible for the net worth of 10,000 guitar-repair techs, this venerable device has decapitated even more guitars than UPS and United Airlines combined. So, why are guitars so delicate?
Guitarists blame cords. Or drummers. Critics are swift to point to extreme headstock angles or weaker materials, like mahogany. After all, Leo Fender and company put that quarrel to justice long ago by constructing an industrial-grade, fretted Excalibur from rock maple—with no headstock pitch to boot. Known for durability in combat, the bolt-on maple neck stands as de facto judge and jury for less-robust designs. You’d think guitar makers would have gotten the message by now. I can imagine the advertising bullet points:
· Won’t break when you toss it and miss the couch.
· Strong enough to survive a gig bag.
· Stands up to toppling stands.
· What could be better? Airbags?
Pitched (angled) headstocks can be traced back 15 centuries to the medieval oud and its younger cousin the lute. These had long, thin headstocks raked back at nearly 90 degrees—possibly to facilitate easy reach to their tuning pegs. The guitar as we now know it developed from the Spanish guitar (which evolved from the lute), with the headstock pitch reduced to somewhere between 7 and 17 degrees—or, in the case of Fender, zero. Guitar builders of the last four or five centuries have struck a balance between performance and ease of construction, with Fender taking the prize for the latter.
Let’s take a look at how headstocks are constructed. Part of it is tradition born out of functional design. Head pitch keeps strings in the nut by diverting pressure downward on the nut. The slighter the angle, the less pressure, so each designer must choose how steep to go. The downside of more of an angle is friction that can affect string stretching during tuning, bending, and tremolo use. The benefit is greater transmission of vibration at the nut and reduced dissipation of energy to the headstock. Headstock vibration can also be argued, but that discussion is for another day.
The ways to achieve the pitched angle seen on modern guitars fall into two camps. The first is the scarf joint, seen on traditional classical and flamenco guitars. This is simply cutting the flat neck board on an angle and gluing a flat headstock onto that. The pitch is determined by the cut angle. One variation of this type of headstock—sometimes seen on vintage Martins and other acoustics—uses a “bird’s beak” joint to strengthen things up. The side effect is an attractive diamond-shaped affair on the back of the headstock.
The second type is the fully constructed neck, as seen on instruments like Gibson’s and Gretsch’s. This requires a lot more material that’s cut from expensive, thick boards. The result is a nice, clean look, but it unfortunately provides a shortcut for breakage along the grain line, right at the instrument’s most vulnerable point, where neck and head meet. The cutout channel for a head-end truss-rod adjustment weakens this area even more. Some builders attempt to increase strength by creating a bump (called a volute) at the back of the headstock where it meets the neck shaft, but, in reality, the added material falls below the line of most breaks. The truth is that the volute was a manufacturing shortcut, at least until CNC machining made handblending unnecessary.
The Fender example uses string trees on the higher strings to create the downward angle that the zero-pitch headstock does not. This sometimes results in friction-related tuning issues. For the most part, it’s an inexpensive, slightly inelegant solution. In the win column, the zero-pitch head is a three-birds-with-one-stone example of Fender’s design philosophy. The absence of pitch allows a neck to be made of a single, 1"-thick piece of ordinary and plain (aka cheap) maple, while it dispenses with all the pesky woodworking needed to fashion an angled headstock. The bonus is that the grain of the wood is continuous, which helps prevent breakage. Although not as fancy looking as something like a D’Angelico, I still love it, as does most of the guitar universe.
All said, guitars are not alone in their fragility. Classical instruments like the cello and French horn are vulnerable to damage when mishandled. A 4-foot drop wouldn’t do much for an accordion, either. Playing guitar has become a contact sport, which is probably why the question of outsized durability is discussed at all. To me, it seems slightly comical to expect a multi-thousand-dollar guitar to be toddler-proof. My question isn’t why headstocks break. … It’s why we expect them not to.
