When you are tuning up your guitar, and/or setting intonation, do you tune according to the note of the attack on the string note, or the slightly flatter dwell of the note?
When I pick a string to set intonation, the initial attack of the note is sharper than the decay or dwell of the same note after it has rung out for a second or two, according to my quartz tuner. Do you set up your guitars for intonation based on the attack note or the dwell note?

I set mine by the dwell note. Seems to work well for me.

Me too!!

Dwell for me

dwell here mate

Any tuning job, including adjusting intonation, I use the dwell but I find the dwell sometimes becomes erratic as the note decays so I use the short part of the dwell that occurs immediately after the sharpness of the attack dies. Not all electronic tuners are sensitive enough to notice this so YMMV.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

What they said

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"Life is like eating jalapenos. What you do today may burn your arse tomorrow"

Hmmmmm. Well, I've been doing it the other way since I got an electronic tuner about a year ago. It sounds in tune playing along with backing tracks or other tunes. I've always thought my ear was pretty good but I'm obviously the odd man out here.

I repeatedly pick the string I'm tuning without waiting for the dwell because, as someone mentioned, the dwell tone changes.

Allright Doctor! Someone should get to the bottom of this!

Gridlok

:twisted::evil::twisted::evil::twisted:

Attack. And if your using a tuner ditch it, particularly with intonation settings. If you can hear the difference between attack and dwell as a reference it doesnt matter. Its at worst 8 cents.

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No no and no

I should mention that I'm only talking about tuning, not intonation. My Seiko (cheap) tuner is actually highly accurate and helps to pinpoint the tuning.

Also, if it was 8 cents out, it would be pretty much unplayable. (It's easy to hear 2 cents worth of error.)

So thanks, but I'll keep my tuner.

Gridlok

Remember, you can push a string out of tune by hitting it really hard - I freakin love that sound, like a horn player overblowing so the note goes way sharp...

The sound of an open low E string hit so hard it takes a second to come back to pitch, through a loud amp, with a bit of harmonic feedback.... woah mamma!

But my point is, I tune to the sustained part of the note because the inital string attack varies in sharpness depending on how hard you hit it, but the sustained part of the note is always the same pitch.

We don't wanna be too in tune anyway do we? Sometimes I like to pull my bar chords a little accross the neck to get them nicely out of tune on purpose... just smear the pitch a little.

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"...Compared to the flowers and the birds and the trees, I am an Apeman."

If you can hear 2 cents, considering theres a 100cents between 2 notes (the clue is in the word cent, meaning one hundred). You dont need a tuner.

Now sir when are you available to come and intonate my guitars?

P.S accurate tuning can come very cheaply. I bought this for $8/£6
http://www.tbstrobetuner.com/
I dont use anything else now.

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No no and no

That's not a great solution for us Mac users, or touring musos. I can't see myself taking a computing device running windows XP on stage with me to tune my guitar... I like one I can tread on thanks.

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"...Compared to the flowers and the birds and the trees, I am an Apeman."

Ah Nic but as you well know, you could be absolutely to the thousandth of a cent bang on. Onstage it matters little if the bassist, other guitarist and keyboard are all tuned to eachother allbeit slightly sharp or flat. Its far more important in that situation to be intune as a band rather than individualy bang on accurate. Its obviously not designed for the situation where "Give us an E mate?" will suffice quite nicely.

Dunno about you but I gig with 2 guitars most of the time, if not 3 depending on list length and breaks. Being out of tune and string breakage doesnt worry me. I just grab another guitar if I'm in a rush and restring or retune at intervals. It looks far more proffesional than trying to tune up between songs with a pedal tuner that doesnt guarantee your bandmembers pitch.

As for mac users, you bought it on yourself

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No no and no