How did guitars avoid going decimal?

ADP

Weirdly, in countries that are exclusively metric in all other respects, TVs are (or at least were until recently) measured in inches.

gavin_axecaster

carlos said:

guitars4you said:

 I have tended to always use imperial as mentioned above, by many, regarding scale length, fingerboard radius etc - yet for nut width I tend to use 1 11/16 or 43mm which is effectively Gibson width (plus many others) - yet always 1 5/8" for Fender-esq nut width as I don't know what that equates to in mm, but certainly less of a straight forward number to recall

You find it easier to remember 1 11/16 and 1 5/8 rather than 43mm and 42mm? Am I the only one who has to do the math in his head if 11/16 is bigger or smaller than 5/8? 43 is clearly bigger than 42, easier to remember.

I can understand stuff like radius, where 12" is 305mm which is a harder number to remember. But those fractions?

1 5/8 is not 42mm, it's 41.3mm.
Fender nut widths are all over the place - "vintage" 1 5/8" (also written 1.625") = 41.3mm, most Mexican Fenders not based on a vintage model are 42mm (1.65") and most US not based on a model year are 1 11/16" = 42.86mm
Can't see the point of both 1 5/8 and 42mm - the majority of the time a 42mm nut will fit a 1 5/8" neck without any spacing issues.

ESBlonde

We've managed to go decimal and you'll have to go a few miles to find an exception to that. If you find one we can discuss it over a pint.

bluechargeboy

Ibanez are pretty good with metric descriptions, although the actual dimensions are the old familiar ones that we are used to.

Being 44.25 years old, I think in metric, measure in metric, and convert imperial descriptions into metric so I can visualise them. I have no problem talking about a 25.5" scale length versus a 24.75", because they are just differentiating two variants. They might as well be called F and G. If I was measuring out frets or building a guitar I would use metric.

scrumhalf

I was taught metric in primary school n the late 60s which left me with a dichotomy - n the one hand I knew about a system that wasn't used by anyone who'd left school and I was surrounded by measurements in a system that could have originated in Albania for all I knew.

I still have to mentally adjust anything metric I come across into imperial.

aord43

DiscoStu said:

stickyfiddle said:

What *really* gets me is their insistence on frickin CUPS for baking, which means the density and settled-ness of your flour will make or break your cookies. Baking is chemistry - it needs to be exact! 

That's easy. 1 cup = 236.59 ml. So simply measure 236.59 ml of flour next time.

Same applies if you're using volume, ie. ml, to measure flour.
Has to be weight!  Preferably g or kg

aord43

GSPBASSES said:

sgosden said:

It's cos old blokes make em innit. Old blokes don't understand new stuff like metric system, computers, or dub steps. Think it's just witchcraft and noise.
Innit. 

This old geezer went metric years before it was supposed to be compulsory. I reckon 90 percent of the orders I get from you  youngsters are in Imperial (at my age anyone under 60 is a youngster). I think that is very disingenuous to say that old blokes don't understand metric or computers. I installed a computer system in my company, most likely before a lot of the members of this forum were born. It had two 8" floppy disks holding a massive 40 K each, one was for programs and the other one for data. There was about 6 data discs that were split in alphabetical order to hold the accounts of our customers. This was replaced a few years later by a IBM PC with a 40 megabyte hard disk.

Interestingly, my stay in hospital before Christmas is was in the ward full of old geezers like me, and every one of them had a smart phone or an iPad. They did know how to use them, I would say over half of them were using their iPads to face time their family and friends.

So maybe you should rethink that statement about old blokes. 

What did you say they were, 8-INCH floppy disks?
We used to use 200mm ones

aord43

and people who go on a "5K" or a "10K" run still talk about pace in minutes per mile.  Except me, I run in km only and have to try to figure it out in miles if somebody asks.

Nitefly

I miss my old red Silvine exercise book with its tables on the back cover - rods poles and perches, troy ounces, avoir-dupoids ounces, pecks, bushels - just for the names...