Does anyone understand how having the E and D strings shorter than the A and G makes sense? It seems like your choices are to have the E and D "true" and the others flat; or the A and G "true" and the others sharp. I'm presently opting for the latter, where my ear doesn't start to worry until I get above, say, the seventh fret of the E string and things get noticeably sharp.
On my older mando with a straight bridge, everything is just peachy: with a little attention to intonation when I change the strings, all four courses seem "true" all the way, both to my ear and to a tuner. Yet compensated bridges are clearly the industry standard now (just survey the offerings at Elderly).
Is it possible there's some reason to be deliberately out-of-tune a bit, perhaps to limit sympathetic-response?
Whatever the physics may be underlying this, I'd be interested to know if others perceive a problem and if so, how they "compensate for this compensation".
Apologies if there's already a thread on this, I looked and didn't spot one. -- PDW
He joyously felt himself idling, an unreflective mood in which water was water, sky was sky, breeze was breeze. He knew it couldn't last. -- Thomas McGuane, "Nothing but Blue Skies"
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