I find this thread to be fascinating, and I expect that it may be very helpful to me in the future. It also causes me to think about the thread that was making the rounds a couple of months ago on stagefright, because while I don't seem to mind speaking, playing or singing in front of a large group of people, ask me to tune in front of a group that is waiting for the next song and I fall apart...it takes me too long, my ear goes numb or dumb. Truth be known, I'm one of those guys who has that certain knack of finding the one string that is out of tune, and then retuning the entire guitar to that one string, (and poorly at that). As a result, when I do play in front of others I usually cheat and use an electronic tuner. I will have to devote some time to one or more of the methods described above and see if I can ween myself from the tuner. This thread also raises a question for me. I also play 5 string banjo.... most often tuned to an open G chord. With the banjo I have much greater success tuning by ear than I do the guitar, I assume, because I am tuning to an open chord. My problem with the banjo though is that although I can always get the 5th, 4th, 3rd, and 1st strings perfectly in tune with each other by ear, the 2nd string, (a B) always fights me. Does the answer to this vexing problem lie somewhere in the difference between pure and equeal temperaments, or is it just further evidence of incompetence on my part.

Len