Side-by-Side Comparison of a Squiggly Fretted True Temperament Guitar With a Custom Fender Telecaster

Paul Davids Adam Neely True Temperament Custom Tele

Dutch music vlogger Paul Davids welcomed fellow musician Adam Neely (previously) to the studio in order to do a side-by-side comparison of a True Temperament (TT) “squiggly fretted” neck on Strandberg Boden guitar with a custom, straight-fretted Fender Telecaster.

They both found the TT neck to be light, easy to play and found the intonation to be clear, but Neely wasn’t too sure about putting a TT neck on his bass. He did acknowledge, however, that he understood why TT necks are so popular.

It plays like any other guitar. You don’t feel weird squiggly frets. The thing about True Temperament frets is that it adjusts for intonation errors on the neck of a regular guitar. …I thought about getting a bass with True Temperament frets because their intonation on bass chords is sometimes very squirrely. Yeah but after playing this I’m not sure. It almost starts from almost a too sterile place. Like it’s strange but I can definitely see why people might like it.

True Temperament explains via their FAQ page that their curved frets are part of a Dynamic Intonation construction.

…True Temperament™ Fretting System is a revolutionary new way to construct guitar fingerboards with Curved Frets™ which tune accurately along the whole neck. We call it Dynamic Intonation™. The Thidell Formula One temperament will give you a super-accurate intonation. All different keys work perfectly fine all over the fingerboard.

Here are some other True Temptation necks that are available.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.

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