UNPLANNED DOWNTIME: 12th Oct 23:45
Altered Tunings: All on One Guitar?
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If you like playing in one or more altered tunings, do you re-tune the one guitar all over the place, or do you have a few guitars and designate one tuning per guitar with strings in gauges to match?
I've had more than one acoustic for most of my guitar-playing life, and at various times I'll designate one guitar for DADGAD or open G/Gm or open C and buy strings that fit that tuning - a tighter 1,2, & 6 for DADGAD, a tighter 1,5, & 6 for open G/Gm, a tighter, 1,5, & 6 and a lighter 2 for open C tuning The problem with this is that I know many more songs in standard tuning than I do in altered tunings, and if I've put string sets on a guitar in line with a specific tuning, that restricts me from tuning back to standard. So, sometimes I'll just use a standard set of strings and tune them all over the place, which can mean a rather floppy feel on the strings that have been tuned down.
What do you do?
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The only other tunings I use in electric is Open A (or G) or Open E which seem less of a change than something like DADGAD or the one I liked above, so I seem to have less issue with changing between tunings on that than with the acoustic which seems more likely to break things.
And me whilst changing strings (minus the third string as it had broken, prompting the strong change in fact)
I'd describe the sound and feel as happy & sad at the same time. Lots of effectively power chording the bottom 3 strings, and adjusting on the top three strings between major, minor, sus4, etc etc
BUT... I've never done that. BUT then I don't play enough in other tunings.
If I did/// I'd probably go that way. Else suffer floppy strings and tuning instability.
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@Soupman interestingly I have put myself on the list for a custom built Canadian guitar with 2 year waiting list... Good old Mellish would laugh about that one!
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Benefits are more tuning stabilty, and better string tension (& therefore better sound)
I did find that the strings would fatigue at the point where they wrap around the tuning posts, so breakages would occur - usually the 3rd and 4th strings would go while being detuned.
For DADGAD I tune up a semitone to get the same average tension if I retune with ordinary 11s