This can introduce string buzz and, more commonly, string binding (where the string actually gets stuck in the nut) that causes the guitar to go out of tune abruptly while playing, especially if it has a tremolo bridge (unless that bridge is a locking tremolo like a Floyd Rose, in which case the guitar does not have a traditional nut and cannot bind). Moving up a string gauge can turn the nut into a problem area, because the slots may be too narrow to properly hold our new, thicker strings. These come pre-cut from the guitar manufacturer to accept whatever string gauge ships from the factory on our guitars (usually. The nut is the little straight piece of material behind the first fret of the guitar neck with slots in it that hold the strings in position as they come down from the tuning pegs and go across the fretboard. I recommend reading this article by my Seymour Duncan blogging colleague, Orpheo, who explains the whole truss rod thing in detail and will get you through it with no problem. The one-to-one rule of tuning-to-string-gauge is only a general guideline, and we will likely still wind up with slightly more or less total string tension on our neck than we had before, which could easily cause it to have more or less neck relief (curve) in it than it used to. When we change tuning and string gauge, we may need to make an adjustment here. Truss rod adjustments are the simplest, easiest guitar adjustments to make that like 80% of all guitar players are totally uncomfortable with even trying. Which brings us to… The Truss RodĪh, nefarious truss rod, ye mystic purveyor of trepidation! Thou hast no hold o’er me! Nor dost thou quicken mine breast with fear! Thou art mine own to command, for I wieldeth the iron will of the Rock Gods!! …And an allen wrench.įor real, though. Here’s the rub: by changing our string gauge, we create the need for other adjustments to our guitar in order to keep it sounding good and playing well. 042-gauge string sets in E Standard, we should go to. In practice, this means that if we normally play with. Generally, to maintain equal or near-equal string tension, we go up a string gauge for every step we drop tune. The first and most obvious thing we may need to address when changing to a drop-tuned setup is string gauge. However, if we’re going for something more extreme like a lot of modern metal bands use or if we’re looking to make drop tuning a long-term element of our musical palette some adjustments are needed to compensate for the change in string tension compared to when our guitar was tuned to E Standard, and keep our guitars playing the way we’re used to. In fact, Eddie Van Halen will sell us a product to do exactly that. If we’re just going to a common drop-D tuning or Eb “standard” tuning (where every string is just tuned one half-step, or fret, lower) occasionally, this bit of reduced string tension probably isn’t a very big deal. What do we need to do – just tune down the strings to the lowered pitch we desire?īut wait – if you’ve ever turned a tuning machine before, you may have noticed that the lower you tune a string, the more bendy and floppy it gets. Indeed, a great many of us are, but when doing so, we may be missing a number of crucial steps that would help us play and sound a lot better along the way. With so many artists making awesome music right now using extra-low tunings (especially on the heavier side of the genre spectrum), it’s easy to understand how a player could be inspired to give it a try for themselves. Whether we want to make our chords easier to sing along with we’re after a darker, heavier guitar sound or we just want to try something new the fact is that drop tuning has been done by players for a variety of reasons for decades. This term can refer to tuning all the strings of a guitar down the same amount and retaining the same modal shapes (at lower pitches) across the fretboard tuning the 6th string down from E to D to open up new chord shapes and make power chords fret-able with one finger or any number of other alternate tunings. For those few who may be unfamiliar, drop tuning is the practice of tuning the strings on a guitar to pitches that are lower on the scale than the traditional E Standard (E2, A2, D3, G3, B3, E4) guitar tuning.
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