8 String thoughts / Low low tunings

Karl Hungus

Right, well I've been playing a lot this weekend, mostly with my Stealth, and I've been messing around with different tunings on that. I tried out drop-A on that baby, and I have to say, that's an excellent tuning altogether. It's great for retaining all the open chord voicings, and having the serious low end growl there aswell. I hadn't used any drop tunings untill I tried learning Demon Of The Fall, which was in drop D, so I thought I might try it with a 7. Results.

I had the Stealth tuned to ADGCFAD (Low to High) often enough, so I tried tuning it down to that again today, then adding a drop G. Things were seriously getting heavy, but not as problematic as you could imagine. On a 25.5" scale guitar strung with 056-010 gauge strings, it does get pretty floppy, but it's not unplayable. So to hell with it, this is definetly the lowest I've ever tuned it, why not go for it, and drop the low B down to a F#, the same as an 8 String's lowest string would be tuned. So now it's in a very strange tuning of F#DGCFAD.

The results? Very heavy, but very interesting.

If anyone remembers back when I was hypothosizing about getting an 8 String, a lot of things came up about how realistic it would be to have a guitar that's tuned to F# and whether or not it would require specialist amplification or not. Well, I can now safely say that there is no problems in amplifying such a low-end heavy guitar. I'd say amplifying an 8 String tuned to drop E wouldn't be a problem either.

Sounds very nice clean aswell.

Anywho, so that's food for thought, if anyone's interested in some serious low tunings, or basically what an 8 String would be like. No problems amplifying that F#, but I imagine things would be a lot tighter and more playable on an actual 8 string. A 7 String with a 56 gauge lowest string tuned to F#, as one would imagine, is a little on the floppy side.

The only thing I'm not too sure about is whether or not I'd really need to tune any lower than A. 7 String guitars are excellent, even if you just look at it from the point of view of 5 string basses being very common, so that it's very handy to be able to utilise that low B also. The matter of fact is, there's really no 6 string bass with a low F# that I know of, nor really any band that I know of that uses such a tuning, so incorporating an 8 string guitar in a band could be problematic. Hell, look at Meshuggah, their bass player is tuned up to F#, so they're playing the exact same thing, which to my mind is a little on the pointless side of things.

There's plenty of bands that play in B, and a few that play in A, but it rarely gets any heavier. I don't know, one part of me thinks 7 is enough, but another part of me thinks that having 8 to play around with would be awesome, even if it wouldn't be the most practical thing in the world. I think I'd like to try my hand at jamming out some Meshuggah songs on my currently tuned Stealth, and just see do I really feel the vibe.

I said before that if Ibanez ever came out with an 8 String, I'd buy one in an instant. I'm not so sure now.

jcoote

tbh the lowest i'd go is B so i'd be in the same boat as you except with less strings.. i'd like a 7 string for lower tunings without having to retune but after that its just too brutal for my ears..good work tho KH

Karl Hungus

Yeah, brutal is definetly the word. I've go the guitar in my hands while I type, and I do have to say, it's sounding fairly defined altogether, you might think that notes would seem to blur into each other, but they don't.

If I had some webspace to upload it, I'd probably record a soundclip, because: Brutal.

I'm still waiting some some dickhead to come along and say "Why don't you just buy a bass lololol!11!"

jcoote

cpu or someting????

yeah i'de like to hear the defnition especially on the dropped tuning dropped tunings are great altogether

david

Karl Hungus wrote:

Yeah, brutal is definetly the word. I've go the guitar in my hands while I type, and I do have to say, it's sounding fairly defined altogether, you might think that notes would seem to blur into each other, but they don't.

If I had some webspace to upload it, I'd probably record a soundclip, because: Brutal.

I'm still waiting some some dickhead to come along and say "Why don't you just buy a bass lololol!11!"

Myspace?

It wasn't me!

I dunno if I'd ever get my head around an eight-string to be quite honest. I'd like to try, though strings'd be a bitch to find, but I think I'll have enough to deal with with a seven-string to be frank, can always up the guage and tune down for supreme riffage.

Patricide

I was just thinking about stuff like that, I was thinking if you had the stephen carpenter 7 string barritone, chucked a set of 13's on it Then theoreticly id wag er you could tune down to about C standard(as in going down to the next C if ya get me). As in the b string would be going down from b-a-g-f-e-d-c. The strings would be a bit floppy but id say itd still be playable. ITs thoughts like that that really temp me to buy that guitar, anyone on boards got that guitar?try it out if ya do just to see if it would sound any bit good.

Karl Hungus

Patricide wrote:

I was just thinking about stuff like that, I was thinking if you had the stephen carpenter 7 string barritone, chucked a set of 13's on it Then theoreticly id wag er you could tune down to about C standard(as in going down to the next C if ya get me). As in the b string would be going down from b-a-g-f-e-d-c. The strings would be a bit floppy but id say itd still be playable. ITs thoughts like that that really temp me to buy that guitar, anyone on boards got that guitar?try it out if ya do just to see if it would sound any bit good.

I don't think it's really baritone as such. It's 27" scale, and baritones can generally have even longer scales than that, such as 28" or 30" or suchlike. It's more to do with some 7 strings having slightly extended scales to really tighten things up. Schecter 7 strings for example are 26.5" scale, which is just a tiny bit longer than your average 25.5" scale lenth on a lot of guitars.

Can't say I've played one though. The EMGs are a big put off, and what's with the humbucker in middle position? I'd far, far rather a neck humbucker. I'd go for a Schecter, but that's just me.

feylya

Why don't you just buy a bass?



Dickhead

damomeasa

regularly play in C/drop Asharp with 12s on a 6-string SG and it has never posed any problems whatsoever.

RustinPeace

Karl Hungus wrote:

If I had some webspace to upload it, I'd probably record a soundclip, because: Brutal.

Try Acidplanet,soundclick,Mp3 Lizzard,Megaupload or Rapid share.
Just to name a few.
I'd recommend soundclick out of them.