A: Lots of folks believe this, because Buzz Feiten’s *first* discovery had to do with moving the nut to make the open strings play more in tune with the fretted strings.
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.
