Well, I'm not going to argue the point anymore, Bob. Nor am I going to back off on what I wrote above. Both Jim and I are professionals. I don't know how long Jim has been at it, but considering how good he is, I'd say he's been at it for quite a while. As for myself, I have some 55 years of professional musical experience behind me, along with some three years in the University of Washington School of Music and another two years at the Cornish School of the Arts (a consevatory).

As to being "oblivious to that which is around you," I was not sleeping during those 55 years. My remarks about tuning have to do with both the principles of physics, and the experience of both myself and other musicians with stretched strings on a whole variety of instruments (including both steel and nylon guitar strings) and what they do when the tension they are used to is changed. A string's "memory" and it's tendency to try to resume its former tension is a well-known phenomenon among string players. This is one of many reasons why classical musicians, for example, are adamant about tuning their instruments to concert pitch (440-A) and keeping them there.

And yes, I'm familiar with Roy Clark, Buck Owens, Tom Rush, and probably a whole lot of other well-known and not so well-known musicians who use different tunings--and I note that most of the professionals I have seen, both in person and on television, have a whole arsenal of guitars sitting on stands behind them, all tuned to the tuning they want and ready to go. One guitar gets put down and another gets picked up. I have also sat through the tuning throes of a number of musicians who use special tunings and who only have one guitar, and it ain't pretty!

Please, Bob, don't assume that you know how much others know and have experienced.

Don Firth