property of the strings?

Those of you who read the thread 'A couple of questions about tuning...' will know there seems to be some disagreement about whether the 12th fret harmonic is part of the intonation process or an independant property of the strings.

In that thread I claimed the harmonic is an independant property and offered a way to prove it somewhat scientifically. Well I went ahead and did the experiment myself and I belive it strongly supports my position. You are welcome to perform it yourself and see.

First, I used my P-Lyte since the strings were well broken in. I checked the intonation which was as accurate as I can get it.

Then I twisted a 3/4 inch piece of wire around the 'A' string at the 6th fret.



Next, I retuned the open 'A', necessary because the mass 'defect' made the string out of tune.



Then I checked the 12th fret and found it was still in tune. This is to be expected since the mass 'defect' is below the 12th fret.



At this point the string can be considered intonated (to at least the level most of us would accept). That is the open 'A' is in tune and the 12th fret is an octave higher.

So what about the harmonic, the harmonic that was exactly 1 octave higher than the open 'A'? It's 10 cents flat.



I think that shows pretty conclusively that a string can be intonated and yet the harmonic can be out. A simple mass defect in the string can cause this condition.

I welcome your comments.