guitar drop

  • Thread starter Thread starter singlespeak
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singlespeak

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Hi,
I was wondering how far I could drop all the strings on my electric guitar before anything goes wrong. I think I need 2 full tones before I can reach the high vocals. Is that ok for the guitar?
 
Two full tones? Downtuning to C?

You can't "hurt" anything but your truss rod may need a little adjustment to account for the reduced tension. I think some players go to a larger gauge string if they're going to drop that far.
 
singlespeak said:
Hi,
I was wondering how far I could drop all the strings on my electric guitar before anything goes wrong. I think I need 2 full tones before I can reach the high vocals. Is that ok for the guitar?
Click to expand...

If it's a floater be prepared to dick with the springs for an hour or so. I think you'd also get a lot of buzzing going on. Like ZB said give it a go and see what happens
 
Rule of thumb: For every half tone you drop you need to go up a gauge of string. That is very approximate and depends on many other things such as your existing setup, the action, string length etc.

Learn to play in the key that is right for the vocal. Much easier...
 
In my band we tune everything down 2 steps (to D) and half of our songs use Drop d tuning (which is actually down to C) , thats as comfortably low we go , any lower you just get a lot of Flappy strings and tones that are too muddy ....
 
Don't mess with it, because when you're a famous rock star the guitar techs will be pissed at you.
 
If you MUST drop it down, you could try a Morpheus Drop pedal. You keep it tuned to 440 and select how many steps you want to drop.
It works, though if you toggle back and forth to standard, you will notice some minor tone & volume change. But if you can set it and forget it, this might be the thing for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Mf54MxqUaA
 
...unless you go up far enough and then........


Your head explodes! :D
 
matttheaxe said:
Then you have a mandolin:eek:
Click to expand...
Yeah, see, I misplaced my magical drop-capo and I actually tried my normal capo before I thought of dropping and it made me think of a banjo. That's a deal-breaker.

@muttley600
A gauge per semitone huh? That sounds overzealous to a noob like me. Your suggestion is what's on my plate for tonight: peg the highest vocal, find key, rearrange guitar chords.

@Minion
Drop C works in action for you, that's good to know.

@MikeSknabriaf
That's what guitar techs are for dammit! :spank:

@matttheaxe
Yup, thought about cheating as well, but software instead of hardware.

Bottomline: I'll try changing key first, then give dropping a go to see what it does, and get back to this thread.

Thanks everyone.
 
You're probably going to do this anyway, but if you want to drop 2 tones, you'll need to dedicate a guitar to the experiment...

Put the heavier strings on (I'd go with the Mutt on this, I've got a 1 tone drop guitar and have gone up 1 guage and it's not quite right, although it is an acoustic..), set the thing up again to minimise buzzing and leave it alone...

Don't be retuning back up to standard all the time ...
 
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