baritone?

A

ahuimanu

New member
Hi,

I had never heard of a baritone guitar before this year (been playing, lackidasically, for about 20 years now).

Does anyone have any experience with these and could you offer advice on getting one at a budget-range price ($300-$500). It seems a way to get deeper tones with out mushing out from detuning. I'm more of a bass player than guitarist, so the heavy gauges don't scare me.

Thanks
 
I play a 7 string (which is fairly close), so I might not be of much help here. My understanding is that baritone guitars are designed to be tuned 2 1/2 steps lower than your basic guitar. (B E A D F# B) The neck length, as well as the neck construction, is slightly different to compensate for this and obviously you would use a different set of strings so that they don't go around flapping in wind.

As far as the sounds go, I love this kind of stuff. 7 strings and baritones usually get associated with deep chunky metal riffs, but I've been using mine a lot for clean channel sounds. That "almost bass-like sound" really does a great job of filling out those chords.

Avoid floating bridges like the plague. Again, I can't speak too much in regards to baritone guitars, but on 7 strings it just sucks. I superglued a bunch of metal plates to the tremolo and added an extra spring just to keep that stupid thing from floating anymore. Now it no longer takes me an entire day just to tune.
 
Hey Purge,

Thanks. I've heard that they go A-A sometimes. I wonder what gauge of strings would be good? 14s?
 
Baritone design is a moving target. There is no "standard" for what a baritone should be. I know guys who do these things, and some of them are meant to be tuned down to C, and some are meant to be tuned down to A. Which one is up to the designer of the instrument. Moses makes a replacement graphite neck, which will fit on a Strat as a direct replacement. A couple of companies either make, or have made, production models (Ibanez, I believe).

I have tried making one (an acoustic), but the guitar does not sound the way I want it to, and the scale length is too short to tune it down as much as I would like to. I may try again some day, but as of yet, it is not a priority.

The gauge of strings necessary to play that low depends on the scale length. On a 30 inch scale, you can use just about whatever strings you want. On a 27, you need really big strings.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
ahuimanu said:
Hey Purge,

Thanks. I've heard that they go A-A sometimes. I wonder what gauge of strings would be good? 14s?
Click to expand...
Not sure. Maybe you could try a set of 7's and just chuck the high E? I don't know how dynamic the difference in string tension would be. But I would think that tuning down to A-A wouldn't be much of a problem--it's only one step and guitarists do that pretty frequently anyway.
 
Also, Light is correct about Ibanez making baritones. I actually had my eye on their Mushok model, which runs about 600-700 bucks. You won't get much of an objective opinion from me about their guitars--I'm a complete Ibanez whore and I can't stop buying the damn things.

Epiphone also makes a baritone, but I can't remember how much it costs. Interestingly enough, I do remember the writeup saying that the low string was a 68...the B string on my 7 is only a 56 and that was from a set labeled "mediums". Hmmm...

You might also check out ESP and Dean. They seem to dabble with oddly stringed guitars at times, just not as much as Ibanez does. Let me know if you find anything cool.
 
Purge, Light,

Thanks guys.

It does seem as though the necks go from 27 out to 30. I was hoping for something that'll tune to B through B as that would match my 5-string bass. I also see that Fender made one back in the day at 30" and there is, aside from your great suggestions Purge, also a cheapie from OLP.

I guess the metal (esp. nu-metal) guys like these 7-strings so that they can "go down low," but I don't hear much about baritones. Seems like this would be create for other voicings as well - perhaps the sustain from larger strings would be awesome.
 
Got my baritone today - cool stuff!

I got a cheapie Music-Man knock-off from OLP, the MM5. The guitar has a 30" neck and tunes to the B-B or A-A area.

This puppy was hard to find, but I wanted a low-risk tryout with a baritone. While the electronics in such a low-priced guitar are obvioulsy lacking, the craftsmanship ain't all bad.

The lower tones are sweet and she plays nicely in the hands.
 
I have a Danelectro bari AND a Yairi acoustic bari.

Each has uses, but they are pretty limited. The acoustic is really only useful for "special" effects, and sometimes when I'm playing with a singer who needs to sing in a certain key when I need to play the guitar part in a certain position.

The Dano was used widely in the late 50s and early 60s for "tic tac" guitar parts, especially on 6/8 ballads, where you had an upright bass. The Dano would play a more complex bass part, more of what a Fender bassist would play nowadays. Often there was a ton of reverb on the amp.

However, it's pretty cool as a changeup for guitar leads. No one's expecting to hear a guitar lead way down there. It's huge.

I've never heard anyone play chords on a bari on a recording.
 
i know that you already bought your bari........but i'm pretty positive that fender makes a baritone strat. i'm not sure how long they're been making them, but i remember playing on one....it could have been a squire......but i think it was fender.
 
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