[TEMAS]

This is something that has always bothered me. No matter how perfectly in tune and intonated my guitar is, whenever I add distortion to basic major guitar chords (or some other chords for that matter) it sounds terrible. And I hear the same problem often when I listen to other people play as well.

I have found though, that if I tune the note that makes the chord major slightly flat (for example G sharp in E major), then it sounds much more harmonically pleasing with distortion than when tuned correctly.

Of course, the problem with this is that once I've de-tuned my G string, my song is totally restricted to E shape bar chords. But they do sound so much better.

I decided to record my experiments. 2 takes - the first one with the G string tuned flat, the second with 'correct' and accurate western tuning. On each take I start by playing each note of E major top to bottom so you can test the tuning of my guitar if you like. You then hear the E major / G major / A major strummed through 2 different distortion effect pedals (actually first is a high gain, the second is a germ fuzz).

I am positive there is nothing wrong with my guitar or my hearing. My guess is that the reason the flat version sounds better is to do with the frequency of harmonics. But I'd be interested to know if anyone else can offer an explanation.

Cheers.