(a) You can compare the prices of the two most-similar instruments.

For example, compare the TrueTapper Eclipse 12-string Megatar ($1290) with the Chapman ‘Grand Stick’ ($2500), and you will discover that the lower-cost Eclipse actually gives you better features and faster delivery!

Detailed comparison chart –

http://megatarcomparison.com/buy-chapman-stick-feature-chart/

(b) An alternative way to compare is to compare two instruments with the most-similar prices and see what you get with each one …

For example you could compare the Megatar MaxTapper NITRO ($2690) with the Chapman ‘Grand Stick’ with active-circuit preamps ($2700), and you will discover that the NITRO gives you not just active magnetic pickup sound, but includes world-famous Bartolini active magnetic sound, plus an entire second sound system from the astounding Graph-Tech ‘acoustiphonic’ Screaming-Ghost piezo system.

Further, that the Nitro offers the usual enhancements: three method books, patented MegStrap, and the patented Buzz Feiten Intonation System so your playing sounds more ‘in tune’ than normal guitars or Stick instruments.

Further, the Dual-Sound NITRO gives you separate tone/volume knobs and selector switches so you can choose either the rich and warm magnetic sound for melody or bass, or you can choose the crisp and full-frequency sound of the Screaming Ghost piezos … or you can blend them using the on-board controls, and you can output them blended or with a true Quad output for the most powerful sound on any touchstyle instrument in the world.

Plus, you save $10.

Now you know.

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Not really. Of course, the better you tune up, the better you will sound. However, the Feiten system is installed by making small adjustments to string length at both ends of the strings. On one end, the nut (or zero fret) is moved slightly. On the other end, the string saddles are adjusted to +/- a few cents here and +/- a few cents there.

The result is kind of like the ’stretch tuning’ commonly used on pianos to make them sound more ‘in tune’ to our ears. Pianos have used this advanced ’stretch tuning’ system for 700 years. But guitars never had such an adjusted tuning until Buzz Feiten, a southern California studio musician, developed the system.

A guitar has to have adjustments in two dimensions. Adjustments *along* the length of the string, and adjustments *across* the strings (one string against another). It’s not a perfect system, but it sure sounds a lot sweeter than no system at all!

Because the adjustments are already done, at both ends of the strings, you can tune up any way you wish.

So tune up using any method you like — tuner, ear, harmonics, beats — and it will sound better than a normal guitar, because the string saddles have offsets, and each string is biased a little against the other strings. There is a suggestion in the Mobius Megatar Owner’s Guide for one way to tune up, but you can tune it any way you wish, and it will sound more ‘in tune’ than would a normal guitar tuned up in the same way

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However, after that he went further, and along with super-luthier Greg Back of Southern California, they developed a whole set of adjustments you make to the bridge saddles. In effect, you are intentionally make the strings precisely ‘out of tune’ by an exact amount. What exact amount? Why the exact amount that your ears need to hear because of the way ears actually work.

It took them five years, they report, to uncover by tedious experiment, the exact formula that makes human ears hear strings as being ‘in tune.’ We shouldn’t be too hard on Feiten and Back for taking five years; after all, it took piano tuners much longer to develop the ’stretch tunings’ that are now used on pianos worldwide.

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Compare the sound of one of our instruments to the sound of a normal guitar, or some tapping instrument that doesn’t have the Buzz Feiten Intonation System. The better your ears, the more dramatically you will hear the difference.

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