tweak mah guitar

June 28, 2007 9:39 PM

Guitar Filter: On a 6 string electric guitar playing blues or rock, have you ever strung the same gauge on all three lower strings and the same gauge on all three upper strings? What did it sound like, and did you like it? How about the playability?

On a 6 string electric guitar, have you ever strung the same gauge on all three lower strings (E, A, D) (say for instance, 36 gauge on all three, or 32 gauge on all three), and then strung the same gauge on the upper three (G, B, E), for instance say 11 gauge on each of the upper three? My question is, if you have ever tried that --- WHAT DID IT SOUND LIKE? WAS IT A GOOD SOUND? Was it different in a good way? Was it noticable when playing blues or rock-n-roll (with moderate distortion, for instance)? How would you describe the sound (and did you like it?) -- also how would you describe the playability? (did you like the playability?).

posted by jak68 to sports, hobbies, & recreation (17 comments total)

It's going to be basically unplayable, I think, if you don't actually do damage to your guitar. Either you're going to have strings way way too tight or way too loose. Strings that are too loose even a few half steps get wobbly and flabby, strings that are too tight are going to put a lot of tension on the neck if they don't actually snap.

Not to mention, you're basically asking a question that could be answered in 10 minutes with some strings...
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:13 PM on June 28, 2007

"Not to mention, you're basically asking a question that could be answered in 10 minutes with some strings..."

If anyone can do this experiment I'd love to hear the results. (I dont have my guitar conveniently nearby and wont have it conveniently nearby for another 6 months).

I vaguely remember reading somewhere about some famous guitar player who had the BE strings on the same gauge, but I dont remember the details. It made me wonder about have EAD on same gauge and GBE on same guage. I imagine that it might not be an unpleasant sound if the loose/tight tuning issues arent really issues.
posted by jak68 at 10:33 PM on June 28, 2007

Here's a way to think about it: Take your normal D string and try to tune it down almost a whole octave to E. You can't get it far before it's so loose it flaps against the fretboard. The same thing will happen with a similarly-sized string in the normal E string position.

Now, for kicks, try what you're suggesting but go with an alternate tuning. Something like DDDEEE should be fun! I think I read once that's a tuning Thurston Moore uses sometimes. (among about a million others he uses)
posted by tdogboy at 10:50 PM on June 28, 2007

If you plan on tuning the strings to their proper notes (EADGBE), it basically isn't going to work. You're looking at almost octave between the E and the D on the same gauge, for example. If I remember my physics correctly, that means you're going to have to pull the D string almost twice as tight as you're supposed to. That's going to snap the string. Or warp the guitar neck.

Now, tuning them to all the same note or close to it (EEEBBB for example) is another matter entirely. I've done it, when I had a broken arm and couldn't finger the frets properly, and I can assure you it does sound cool.
posted by Jimbob at 10:55 PM on June 28, 2007

Yeah, what tdogboy said.
posted by Jimbob at 10:55 PM on June 28, 2007

I don't think you'd damage your guitar if you used the thinnest gauge for the tops and then the bottoms. If you have a fixed bridge, it may stayed tuned easier than a tremolo.

I imagine it would have a Sonic Youth jangly sound as Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo (as well as others) have experimented with these kinds of tunings and settings for years. They don't play Blues rock though. Instead of using a standard tuning, you could try B G D from high to low and experiment with a slide and see what you get...
posted by chillmost at 10:55 PM on June 28, 2007

You could try the Nashville tuning which is similar in that the string gauges are relatively the same or closer to each other in terms of gauge. I tried this on an acoustic guitar (my Takamine) and really liked the sound.

You may also be interested in Sonic Youth's "Mastadon" tuning which is similar to what you're describing.

"As Sonic Youth "used modal tunings, open tunings (ones we made up), octave pairs, two or three strings tuned to the same note, same gauge strings in different places or even half step tunings like pair of D strings and then a pair of D sharps."[27] The latter examples (such as D and D# alongside each other) are very rarely used in pop music, and offer a distinctly jarring dissonance, imparting the teeth-rattling quality so especially prominent on the group's early albums."


Maybe other SY fans can point you to a song that demonstrates what that sounds like.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:03 PM on June 28, 2007

Laffo. Chillmost for the square!
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:04 PM on June 28, 2007

Here you go. Kill ur Idols. Thurston and Lee are both using a D/D# tuning. Also, Flower.
posted by Jimbob at 11:07 PM on June 28, 2007

I'm sorry. This is offtopic and completely inappropriate for AskMefi. But I just came across this on YouTube and I just had to show someone.
posted by Jimbob at 11:10 PM on June 28, 2007

Dick Dale uses the same string for G and B.
14, 18, 18, 34, 48, 60 if I remember right.
posted by gally99 at 11:44 PM on June 28, 2007

On the bass guitar side of things, I remember reading an interview with Primus' Les Claypool. At the time he was using two A strings and two G strings. One A string would take place of the E, and one G string would take place of the D. He'd tune normally (EADG), but the gauges would be super light on the E + D. I tried this and playing was very fast, but those super low gauge strings were a bit floppy and the low end tone went away. Maybe if I had stuck with it I might have liked it more. It was easier to play out of tune as my fingers weren't used to all those low gauge strings.
posted by dr. fresh at 6:09 AM on June 29, 2007

I seem to remember that TPOTUSOA (the presidents of the united states...) played basitars and guitaribases. You could steal their tunings if you want something crazy.
posted by tmcw at 8:28 AM on June 29, 2007

I actually did do that on a beater Squier strat I had back in the early '80s but I used thicker gauges: medium acoustic low E and B strings (three .056s and three .017s). I think we were in our bottle-toke phase or maybe it was the beer-ball-painted-like-the-earth-bong phase...

Anyway, It was an experiment that didn't last long because I basically found that it made the instrument unplayable without spending an inordinate amout of time learning a new technique and it wasn't very comfortable. But it did sound interesting and noticably different, especially power chords ("Smoke On The Water" and "Whole Lotta Love" rocked, if I remember correctly), and of course I could do outrageous bends on the G string. Take that, Jeff Beck!

And what the first commenter said re. it'd be bad for an instrument in the long run. Any guitar worth maintaining is constructed assuming it will spend most of its time under the tension of your average string gauges in standard tuning. I'm so anal that I get a bit nervous tuning my Taylor acoustic to open G...
posted by St Urbain's Horseman at 8:32 AM on June 29, 2007

thanks everyone, food for thought :)
posted by jak68 at 9:22 AM on June 29, 2007

A friend of mine built Warmoth strat with no pickups except for a Roland VG setup and strung it with all high E strings, since the VG system doesn't care how the strings are tuned. It felt strange, especially since, if you had the VG system turned off, it was horribly out of tune but with the system on it was whatever tuning the computer had dialed in. After a few minutes, it was possible to play insane stuff in any tuning, since the strings were all so light.

He used it for a lot of studio work and some live avant garde jazz stuff. It's been 10 years, and I suspect he doesn't use it anymore, since VG systems have sort of fallen into disfavor.

The point: If you string the guitar with all high E strings, all tuned to the same note, and then run through a Roland VG system, it sounds exactly like a normal guitar, feels weird, and lets you play insanely fast and complex stuff really easily. And it looks bizarre, especially on a strat with no visible pickups and no input jack.
posted by The World Famous at 9:46 AM on June 29, 2007

I've tried variations of this idea. For some things it works, but it's hard to get the gauges right. It's also a lot easier to just use two strings with the same gauge than three.

It can make a very cool sound. Especially say, setting up the low E with the gauge normally used for a A and tuned to regular pitch. It works well for distorted heavy ambient sounds. It's similar to the early Godflesh sounds, which were supposedly a .09 guage set but tuned two steps flat. You can here the floppiness in the strings that way, and it can create an interesting giant robot death rattle sound.

As mentioned, Les Claypool played a setup like this on bass at one point with two A's and two G's.

The all E's strat "The World Famous" mention sounds like a similar idea to The Grid that Emmett Chapman made for a while. It was basically a normal Chapman Stick, but with all the same light gauge strings and a midi pickup and controller to remap to whatever pitches the player wanted.
posted by alikins at 1:02 PM on June 29, 2007