setting up a guitar for MASSIVE downtuning....

[Ancient Astronaught]

Please ignore this thread, my stupidity got the best of me..... again....

[Gearmond]

prolly gonna need thicker strings,

i have that set on my univox, and it barely keeps a low B. granted its a bit on the short scale side

[grindonomicon]

I'd use a P-100 modded to be a massive output single coil. An inexpensive Epiphone P-100 would work. They get the super low end and have @ 18-21k output when modded. 500k or 1 meg pots.

I play a 68 gauge string on top of 4 strings from a set of heavy GHS 13's, with the two unwound strings set aside. I tune to BEADG or sometimes the kooky low GDADG. I dunno if a 72 will get you down below that G, my 68 is as downtuned as I like a string at that point.

[Ancient Astronaught]

Yeah i talked to the tech who i was going to have doing the work and he provided alot of good insight on why it wouldnt work. I think i'm just going to go with .13-.60's in drop A or .13-.6?'s in drop G tuning and convince our bassist to buy a cheapish 5 string i can set up in that tuning for him.

[D.o.S.]

Why not ape the Floor tuning: bomb string, A, A, E, B, E (low to high, obviously)?

[Mudfuzz]

Yeah i talked to the tech who i was going to have doing the work and he provided alot of good insight on why it wouldnt work. I think i'm just going to go with .13-.60's in drop A or .13-.6?'s in drop G tuning and convince our bassist to buy a cheapish 5 string i can set up in that tuning for him.

That seems light to me but it depends on what you are use to.. I use a 70 on both of my guitars I tune to either B or A, and it is punchy as fuck I think the lightest I have ever gone is a 65. Now the lowest tuning I have done on a "normal" guitar was F# and I want to say I used a 95, see this is the one good use for a floyd rose you can put up to about a 100 bass low E on them and they still work

[Moustache_Bash]

Where do you get .70s?

[Mudfuzz]

http://www.juststrings.com/nickelwounde ... rings.html

[Ancient Astronaught]

hmmmmm now im really pondering just getting an agile 8 string instead of putting more money in the v..... i dunno how you guys get any kind of playable action with .70's in b, i use .54's and do my own setups. i find them to be perfect balance of tension and playability with good chord definition, .70's to me would have way too much tension on a regular scale guitar, on a baritone or any longer scale guitar that would be fine.

*edit* stroke of genius..... agile offers the 9 strings now which if i just drop the low string from C# to B it would be exactly an octave below my current tuning which means my bassist wouldnt have to change anything.......

[bubstance]

It really depends on what your definition of "perfect playability" is. I, personally, don't like anything less than around 23lbs. of tension on each string, so my string sets are generally a little on the heavy side. I also don't think an instrument is playable unless the tension is proportional for the tuning (meaning that no matter the tuning the average tension is equal; I like ~23lbs. at standard and at drop G). Just remember, if you want to maintain the tension of your favorite strings on a standard scale instrument with a lower tuning you NEED to scale up the string size proportionally.

Just as an exercise:

Say you like .010"s as your preferred string gauge. We'll use Elixir's string sizes here. So, we know that gauges are .010", .013", .017", .026"w, .036"w, .046"w from smallest diameter to largest.

Here are the tensions (all approximate) at 25.5" scale length in standard tuning:

.010" PL == 16.21#
.013" PL == 15.38#
.017" PL == 16.57#
.026" NW == 18.41#
.036" NW == 19.54#
.046" NW == 17.48#

Now, the tuning you want is DADGBE and octave below standard. Here are the tensions using the set you wanted to use (Ernie Ball baritone set), again at 25.5" scale:

.013" PL == 6.85#
.018" PL == 7.37#
.030" NW == 11.15#
.044" NW == 12.78#
.056" NW == 11.74#
.072" NW == 8.55#

Yeah, that's not happening. To get it to actually be playable you would need the following:

.022" NW == 16.81#
.030" NW == 17.7#
.038" NW == 17.13#
.052" NW == 17.47#
.068" NW == 17.24#
.090" NW == 12.81#

The thing you have to remember is that it takes a massive width to get equivalent tension at lower tunings, so that low D would likely be "playable", but would flop like a motherfucker and be awful in terms of intonation. Also keep in mind that all of those strings in the last example are wound in order to get those tensions. There's no way that that B can be plain, it won't be able to vibrate correctly. The E maybe could be plain, but you'd have to lower it to around a .020".

[Mudfuzz]

hmmmmm now im really pondering just getting an agile 8 string instead of putting more money in the v..... i dunno how you guys get any kind of playable action with .70's in b, i use .54's and do my own setups. i find them to be perfect balance of tension and playability with good chord definition, .70's to me would have way too much tension on a regular scale guitar, on a baritone or any longer scale guitar that would be fine.

It is actually the other way round, the longer the scale the more tension you can get on a thinner string at pitch where the shorter the scale the bigger it has to be to be at correct pitch. Also I use 13's a lot of the time on standard tuned guitars.

[grindonomicon]

http://www.juststrings.com/nickelwoundernieballguitarsinglestrings.html

JustStrings.com = your friend if you like teh odd tuningz!

[Ancient Astronaught]

It really depends on what your definition of "perfect playability" is. I, personally, don't like anything less than around 23lbs. of tension on each string, so my string sets are generally a little on the heavy side. I also don't think an instrument is playable unless the tension is proportional for the tuning (meaning that no matter the tuning the average tension is equal; I like ~23lbs. at standard and at drop G). Just remember, if you want to maintain the tension of your favorite strings on a standard scale instrument with a lower tuning you NEED to scale up the string size proportionally.

Just as an exercise:

Say you like .010"s as your preferred string gauge. We'll use Elixir's string sizes here. So, we know that gauges are .010", .013", .017", .026"w, .036"w, .046"w from smallest diameter to largest.

Here are the tensions (all approximate) at 25.5" scale length in standard tuning:

.010" PL == 16.21#
.013" PL == 15.38#
.017" PL == 16.57#
.026" NW == 18.41#
.036" NW == 19.54#
.046" NW == 17.48#

Now, the tuning you want is DADGBE and octave below standard. Here are the tensions using the set you wanted to use (Ernie Ball baritone set), again at 25.5" scale:

.013" PL == 6.85#
.018" PL == 7.37#
.030" NW == 11.15#
.044" NW == 12.78#
.056" NW == 11.74#
.072" NW == 8.55#

Yeah, that's not happening. To get it to actually be playable you would need the following:

.022" NW == 16.81#
.030" NW == 17.7#
.038" NW == 17.13#
.052" NW == 17.47#
.068" NW == 17.24#
.090" NW == 12.81#

The thing you have to remember is that it takes a massive width to get equivalent tension at lower tunings, so that low D would likely be "playable", but would flop like a motherfucker and be awful in terms of intonation. Also keep in mind that all of those strings in the last example are wound in order to get those tensions. There's no way that that B can be plain, it won't be able to vibrate correctly. The E maybe could be plain, but you'd have to lower it to around a .020".

Ahhhhh well that makes more sense, i've been looking at the agile 8 and 9 strings and they use a .90 on a 30 inch scale for the low C# but even then they recommend a different weird tuning for the guitar. I was going to use this guitar for an odd drone project i have coming up this winter but i'm thiking that the excessive down tuning will really be unnecessary so i'm just going to get the nut replaced and use it the way it is. If we do decide to go the excessive downtune route for the project then i will just go ahead and get an agile 9 string (luckily i have really long fingers) so that i'm not going too far out of the box like my brain tends to do sometimes.

[aen]

Wait, so you want to tune a shortish scale guitar even lower than a bass?
I do not forsee this ending well.

[Ancient Astronaught]

No tune it to the octave between guitar and bass.