Which guitar do you down tune?

[alex1fly]

Thanks all. Cool to hear/see what folks are using for this. I like down tuning for the righteous low growl with high gain, plus it exercises my mind in a different way which is nice.

Are there certain instrument characteristics that lend themselves to downtuning? Or can you pretty much pick any instrument you want to lower, slap some .11s-.13s on there, tune down, and go to town? Do y'all generally have the nut resized to accommodate the larger gauge strings or just roll with what you have already?

 

[JB_From_Hell]

That's a great album with a great raw guitar tone.

Right? I remember Nuno saying in Guitar Player that it was a cranked Vibroverb with a messed up tube, and he was going for an old Van Halen thing, rhythm guitar on one side.

 

[Clint 55]

clints vocal range is such that he doesnt need to tune down for those reasons

Wat

 

[Clint 55]

Interesting, as we are always tuning down to make it easier on the vocals.

I would just transpose the song if I needed to do that.

 

[Clint 55]

I sang baritone in choir at SBCC. My range is about the same as the 1st string on a bass.

 

[Demanic]

All of mine are in D standard.

Sent from my SM-A115A using Tapatalk

 

[JamesPaul]

I would just transpose the song if I needed to do that.

That would mess up my chugging.

 

[weepingminotaur]

I'm primarily a bedroom player, so I tune down because certain songs I want to learn are in those tunings and I don't like how they sound when transposed to different keys.

E standard: Les Paul Standard PlusTop Pro with Black Winter pickups. This guitar can pretty much do it all.
E flat: LTD EC-1000 with Custom 5/Jazz pickups. I'm not quite happy with the pickups, but the guitar plays great for all the Slayer, Megadeth, and Alice in Chains I want to play.
D standard: Schecter Omen Extreme with Nazgul/Sentient pickups. I chose this guitar for D standard specifically because of the Nazgul, which is made for lower tunings and sounds killer.

My considerations have more to do with pickups (Naz for D standard) and switch/splitting versatility to some extent; for example, the Les Paul has (as LPs do) dedicated volume and tone knobs for bridge and neck, and coil-splitting, so I like it in E standard, where I tend to play across more genres (pop, rock, metal, jazz, funk) than say E flat, which is much more metal-oriented.

 

[FuseG4]

I have two guitars, one RG with a floating locking trem and one jazzmaster with the original style bridge

The jazzmaster is pretty much by necessity the one that gets different tunings. If the bridge moves when you tune you just manually adjust it to center and the strings keep it as in place as it's going to be.

If I had to pick between multiple guitars of any kind to find my ideal down tuning experience... It's hard to say but for clean tones I like bright pickups and long scales so as to not be muddy, but with a lot of dirt go ahead and give me a shorter scale and warmer pickups.

As far as strings go I always just folded into a v shape a strip of sandpaper, around the string that is destined to go into that slot, and gave that a few gentle passes through. If you go too heavy you can mess up the break angle, slot depth, create burrs in the nut etc so check your work often by testing the string in the slot. Watching how people do it with files helps. You're looking for the same effect but just making your own impromptu file.

 

[Hsb]

I have one in E standard and 2 I keep in Eb. Every so often Ill drop one to drop Db but that doesnt last too long usually, as for strings Ive always preferred 10s, 9s feel like they are gonna break and 11s feel like cables

 

[dave74]

Most of mine are equally divided between Eb and D-standard, and then I have two at C#-standard.
No big difference in tension because I use a notch higher gauges for each tuning. (9.5-46),(10-48/50),(10.5-52)

 

[Demanic]

I used to love .11's until I started using hybrid sets with the treble strings from a set of .10's with the bass strings from a set of .11's.

Sent from my SM-A115A using Tapatalk

 

[dave74]

I used to love .11's until I started using hybrid sets with the treble strings from a set of .10's with the bass strings from a set of .11's.

Sent from my SM-A115A using Tapatalk

So you are at D-standard with 10,13,17,28,38,48?
That's what I run now with the ultra-slinky sets for D.

 

[weepingminotaur]

All my guitars are Gibson scale, so for E standard I'll go 10/46, E flat 11/48, and D standard 11/52. Bends are so smooth on all of 'em.

 

[JB_From_Hell]

When I was younger, money was pretty tight, so getting a heavier set of strings to try a new tuning wasn’t always a possibility. I discovered that I could make 10-52 work for everything from standard down to C#/drop B.

If I’m doing low tuned metal, I actually prefer how the thinner strings sound with the lower tunings. Ty Tabor from King’s X uses 9-42 down to C, and it adds a lot of clarity to that super heavy stuff.

 

[Jack_TriPpEr]

When i experimented with heavier gauge strings and low tunings a couple years back, i found that anything heavier than 54 gauge, really affected my comfort and command. For example, being able to get pinch harmonics. And since you need lower gauge strings on short scale guitars ( 24.75" scale or less) to compensate for loss of string tension and impact on intonation when down-tuning, essentially i don't like down-tuning lower than Drop C# on a 24.75" scale guitar. That allows me to keep the string gauge at 10-46. I've got one 24.75" scale guitar setup like that.

I also like playing some songs in Drop B, so for that, i use a 25.5" scale guitar with a 54 gauge for thr Low E and the rest of the strings from a 9? 10? gauge set (cant remember right now). On paper it sounds like it wouldn't intonate well and feel very floppy with lite gauge strings like that, but i was pleasabtly suprised to find it didnt. Here's an example of that guitar in action.

 

[pickuptheguitar]

Although I like drop d more, I am currently trying out standard d tuning on my Jackson Js22.

 

[alex1fly]

Although I like drop d more, I am currently trying out standard d tuning on my Jackson Js22.

D standard is fun. I messed around with it on a Strat for a bit. I'd like to leave a guitar in D standard for several months and see what comes out of it.

 

[chadd]

Preferences aside, use the brightest and most articulate guitar you have if you're going down to D standard or below. It can turn to mud pretty fast if you aren't careful.

 

[Bogner]

I am in e standard most of the time. If I tune lower I go a whole step down on all strings at most. I am not a fan of dropping the low string and having the other 5 a different pitch and play bar chords. If I wanted to play bass I would buy one.