Tell me about low F#

[cardinal]

I'm glad you've had good luck with it. I've used from around .170 or so to .182 on a 35" scale, but I couldn't get the sound I wanted. It works, but it's just not the right sound that I want. But maybe it's just my pickups.

I've played around with it a bit more, and the novelty kinda wore off. I guess I can see using it, but "it works" is kinda the best that you can say about it. If I really want to play the root note of what the guitars are doing, playing in unison seems to be the better course.

The extra few notes are kinda fun, and it does sound "better" than the Whammy artificially dropping the low B to low F#, but I dunno. I get why it's not a super common thing. I still think the naysayers blow things out of proportion (it does "work") and so it's worth tinkering with.

But I'll need more time with it before I decide if I really want my main bass to have a low F# string. I doubt I'll use it much and it's hard to mute because it's this giant string flopping around, so it gets a bit annoying once the novelty of DUN DUN DUNDUNDUN DUN DUN DUN wears off.

 

[ixlramp]

I wouldn't expect it to be particularly entertaining or musical played on it's own.
The lower notes get, the less musical they become in isolation and the more dependant they become on being part of a musical context.
Even together with other instruments, super low notes are best used sparingly, not all the time.
Yves Carbonne is a tasteful ERB player with a 12 string from octave-down B, in solo bass pieces he rarely uses the lowest strings, but they really work when he does.
The lowest notes also work well to add a sub-octave to a higher note, like pipe organs often do.