Hey all-

I feel I must share with some of you something I discovered today in my home studio set up. Since it happened to me, maybe, just maybe I can save someone else from having the cartoon donkey that appeared over my head this afternoon.

MAKE SURE YOUR DIGITAL TUNERS ARE SET TO 440 HZ!

Here is my dumb ass story if you are interested:

So, as many of you do as well I'm sure, I have absolute pitch (most of the time). This causes me a lot of frustration because I am never really satisfied with intonation. Keyboards and electrconic instruments are okay. But the equal temperement of guitars, basses and pianos is oftentimes actually more well tempered than even tempered. So over my life as a musican I have learned to adjust and/or accept what I'm hearing to be as good as it will get. One great thing about digital or electronic tuners is that I can use the visual graph to determine when I'm tuned in good enough for the average listener without my handicap (yes it is definitely a handicap)

So about 2 years ago I picked up a Line6 Pod XT Pro guitar processor and stuck it in my rack. As I went about my days recording I would oftentimes use the tuner in the Pod to tune up my bass or electric guitars while trakcing. Or sometimes I would use the tuner in Guitar Rig. Or sometimes I would use this other plugin tuner. And on it went.

But things never sounded right. More than every once in a while I would be recording a song and realize that there were intonation problems coming from this instrument or that instrument. In one song it might be the bass, in another maybe my strat, in another maybe 2 different tracks. Sometimes there would be a few in the same mix...Now keep in mind, my ear can percieve very slight pitch variables, but I have overcompensated for this by accepting this fact. But things started to really get ridiculous after a while. ...How could I possibly have so many problems? Was I innsane? Did I bump my head years ago (drunk of course) and f**k up the frequencies that my mind's ear hears? WHy is that only sometimes this happened? Did it have something to do with the moon? My medications? My insomnia? A bad haircut?...God?

And so- there I was this afternoon, tuning my brand new Gibson (just back from the luthier) through my PodXTPro and saying to myself "this sucks, nothing ever sounds right."...and I look at this little box in the tuner LCD that displays: "436HZ"...hmm?. ."no way". ."you...gotta...be. .kidding". "you moron"... and i clicked the little dial 4 notches to. ."440HZ"

2 years.