Does Anybody Else Like Tuning a Standard-Scale 6-String Down Into 8-String Territory?

[ElectricBaliset]

Tl;dr: thread title.

I go through these occasional fits of inspiration where I really like the idea of a standard-scale 6-string tuned down to a ridiculous register, like G1 or F#1 standard. I get that it presents all kinds of problems wrt harmonicity, intonation, etc., but I kind of like that it gives you those constraints to work against, and I even kind of like the fact that you wind up with a tone and range that's just... challenging to work with, and not all that versatile. When I do it, I end up gravitating towards things I don't usually write - weird, angular death metal riffs, Bongripper-ish doom, etc.

In order to make it at least somewhat useful for things besides plunking like a wannabe bass player, it also forces you to rethink your preferences. It's not easy to get a true modern metal tone with that setup, but you can recover some brightness and clarity just by backing off your string tension a bit. There's something about all these exercises in adaptation that makes the endeavor kind of inspiring to me, I guess.

It's definitely not the only sound or setup I'd ever want to work with. I get on just fine with extended range guitars and more modern metal idioms, and in general I'm more often prone to break out a 28" 8-string when I want to write or riff with that lower register in mind. But sometimes I just want to chunk out monkey brain riffs on a monkey brain instrument.

I haven't really done this with anything shorter than 27" in quite a while - I've gotten in the habit of tuning most of my shorter 6s and 7s to B standard or thereabouts - but I've got a hankering to try it again lately.

I guess I'm just curious, does anybody else ever muck about with a configuration like this, and have you been able to get a genuinely satisfying sound or experience from it? I'm not necessarily asking if you've been able to resolve all of the issues that come with it - just whether it's something you've worked into your creative process and find yourself coming back to.

 

[Hollowway]

Yeah, I think changing it up so that you can’t fall into old patterns is actually a pretty valuable tool. I write on acoustic, too, because even though it’s exactly the same as electric, tuning wise, it’s different enough that I write novel things with it.

 

[penguin_316]

Yea I like to do drop A on like a Gibson scaled guitar, tried and true. When I what it more articulate I'll do a drop F# on my baritone acoustic.

 

[Winspear]

Yes. It's very much on trend right now with bands like Loathe making Bass VIs very popular. Lots of demand for 28-30" baritones, to the extent that the discontinued squier ones have sold for over 1k used. Big fan of it, I don't really care for having trebles above high B anymore so I like to play this range on a 7. I do miss the high end a bit tuned that low on a 6, but it is nice being able to get away with all wound strings as a novelty. I'm seeing more and more demand for my baritone 6 string sets in the last couple of years

 

[Schweick]

I used to do have to do that all the time myself before ERGs became so easily obtainable.

And yes, if you can get an SG or a Les Paul to play in something like A standard then you have actually accomplished something worthwhile. And, tbh, I still much prefer the tone of downtuned floppy standard gauge strings to the gated twonk of .80+ djent cables myself. In this respect, Celtic Frost's Monotheist really redefined for me what was possible with a standard scale and string gauges.

 

[ElectricBaliset]

Yeah, I think changing it up so that you can’t fall into old patterns is actually a pretty valuable tool. I write on acoustic, too, because even though it’s exactly the same as electric, tuning wise, it’s different enough that I write novel things with it.

You make a good point. The underlying ethos of the approach I'm describing, is just sort of changing your idiom. A new instrument, tuning, timbre, or even (for lack of a better) modality, like just playing an electric unplugged, can breed new ideas, because you'll be playing to the strengths of the instrument's voice as you hear it in that moment.

I mention playing unplugged because I often can't be bothered to break out my acoustic - I'll usually just half-ass it by playing an electric un-amped. I tend to write more lush, chordally driven rhythm parts that way, probably because the voices of the individual strings aren't all compressed into essentially one fuzzy voice behind a wall of distortion.

 

[ElectricBaliset]

Yea I like to do drop A on like a Gibson scaled guitar, tried and true. When I what it more articulate I'll do a drop F# on my baritone acoustic.

I've always felt like drop A's about at the lower bound of the range where you can still get a reliably convincing modern metal tone out of a Gibson or Fender scale. It's decidedly harder on a Gibson scale, but if you're willing to sacrifice some tension on the A, it's almost as good as, say, B standard (which I'd argue is definitely in the safe zone at 24.75"). In general, drop A's one of my favorite 6-string tunings, so I can definitely dig it.

 

[ElectricBaliset]

Yes. It's very much on trend right now with bands like Loathe making Bass VIs very popular. Lots of demand for 28-30" baritones, to the extent that the discontinued squier ones have sold for over 1k used. Big fan of it, I don't really care for having trebles above high B anymore so I like to play this range on a 7. I do miss the high end a bit tuned that low on a 6, but it is nice being able to get away with all wound strings as a novelty. I'm seeing more and more demand for my baritone 6 string sets in the last couple of years

Yeah, I've noticed a surprising uptick in bass-VI-scale instruments over the past few years, especially at lower price points (at least when they sell new)! Interesting to hear your perspective as a string vendor, too - even though I'm seeing them pop up more often, I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that they're still rather niche in the grand scheme of the market, especially considering how seemingly over-represented ERGs seem to be in internet metal communities, by comparison.

I really dig having a 7 in F# standard - sometimes even more than a 6 - but my 7s are always either 26.5" or 27", which is basically right in that range where you can't get a really "nice" sound out of F# at, say, ~16-17 lb. of tension, but you also can't get a really fun version of that gross, doomy, inharmonic sound you get at 25.5" or below, so I waffle a lot on actually using it. I can't really do modern with that setup, and I can't do sludgy at all, so I haven't figured out how to truly make it work well, but just as a tuning, it's inspiring to write on essentially a baritone guitar with that bonus low range.

I remember reading an interview with Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age back in the early 2000s in Guitar Player (I think?) where he was asked why he didn't use 7-strings. He ended his answer with something like "the 7-string thing represents the easy way to do what I took the hard way for." I don't really fully get that, especially given that the 7 strings of the time were typically 25.5" and most of the available string sets were still nothing to write home about (to say they definitely still gave you interesting constraints to work against, but I digress), but then again, I find something really cool about the limitation that comes with tuning low and willingly sacrificing some higher range, so I'm really kind of eager to make that 7-string configuration work. I'd agree that it's easy to turn restless on a 6 in that range - I usually go with an unwound 6 even when it sounds awful, just because I personally tend to cringe a bit at the feel of all 6 strings being wound.

 

[ElectricBaliset]

I used to do have to do that all the time myself before ERGs became so easily obtainable.

And yes, if you can get an SG or a Les Paul to play in something like A standard then you have actually accomplished something worthwhile. And, tbh, I still much prefer the tone of downtuned floppy standard gauge strings to the gated twonk of .80+ djent cables myself. In this respect, Celtic Frost's Monotheist really redefined for me what was possible with a standard scale and string gauges.

Speaking my language here. I started playing guitar right around the bloom of nu-metal, so 7-strings were at best a very niche market (and still mostly standard-scale anyway), and baritones were basically a holy grail of sorts. I spent most of that time playing somewhere between C standard and A standard, occasionally dropping the low string like all the cool kids.

Demilich was one of my big eye openers. They play Gibson scales at A standard that actually sound surprisingly decent, and their music takes advantage of their instruments' range. They were one of the first bands I'd ever heard that I felt like capitalized on that low-tuned approach really well, especially for how absurdly low they go, all without resorting to the same uninspired power-chord strumming that a lot of nu-metal degenerated into.

Swedish death metal's been another big one - B standard and .010-.046 strings is just an awesome combo in terms of tone - I use thicker strings than that, but still arguably light in that range. I love going lower, obviously, but I'm pretty much with you on the fact that I've never found an instrument that makes an .080 sound nice. I won't go lower than F#/.074 on my 8-string, mostly just because that's about the threshold of "nice" on that setup. I suspect it works much better on a 30", but my weenie hands aren't bound for that experiment any time soon.

 

[Schweick]

Speaking my language here. I started playing guitar right around the bloom of nu-metal, so 7-strings were at best a very niche market (and still mostly standard-scale anyway), and baritones were basically a holy grail of sorts. I spent most of that time playing somewhere between C standard and A standard, occasionally dropping the low string like all the cool kids.

Demilich was one of my big eye openers. They play Gibson scales at A standard that actually sound surprisingly decent, and their music takes advantage of their instruments' range. They were one of the first bands I'd ever heard that I felt like capitalized on that low-tuned approach really well, especially for how absurdly low they go, all without resorting to the same uninspired power-chord strumming that a lot of nu-metal degenerated into.

Swedish death metal's been another big one - B standard and .010-.046 strings is just an awesome combo in terms of tone - I use thicker strings than that, but still arguably light in that range. I love going lower, obviously, but I'm pretty much with you on the fact that I've never found an instrument that makes an .080 sound nice. I won't go lower than F#/.074 on my 8-string, mostly just because that's about the threshold of "nice" on that setup. I suspect it works much better on a 30", but my weenie hands aren't bound for that experiment any time soon.

Well the thing is standard gauge strings tuned low just sound better, and by better I mean still like a guitar. Once you start getting into the .70+ gauge territory though.... I don't know where the exact lines of sonic demarcation lay, but there is the point where the individual identities between guitar and bass becomes blurred. And in that downtuned no man's land you really can't have it both ways.

Now what I'd really like to see would be a super baritone with something like a 32"-33" scale tuned to F standard.

 

[NeglectedField]

For me, I'm not sure I'd enjoy the sort of bridge cable string gauges required to go much below B at standard scales without things getting muddy, so that's where I'd start looking at longer scales (though not much further than 27" as it feels weird in the opposite way, past that). But that's me, and it's not massively my taste to experiment with tunings either because I have limited guitars to mess with.

Nonetheless I do defend people's right to try whatever the hell they like to see what works for them. Just to stick it to this guy at school who freaked out at me one time for so much as drop-D'ing an SG, like "it's only 24.75! you can't do that!" But I did. And so many bands went much lower at that same scale and made some pretty damn iconic music.

Props to the guy who mentioned Demilich, I think that's A-standard done just right. Bolzer make it sound damn cool as well