Re: Alternate Guitar Tunings (OT)

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

Marc Marshall wrote about his alteration of Sonic Youth's altered tuning 
setup:
                  "I use the following set up low to high.  
38-38-28-28-18-18 but for the record
                            SY uses slightly lighter strings 
in 36-36-26-26-17-17"

Thanks for sharing that tuning, Marc.  I can't wait to try it out.

I always wondered if it would be okay to use all 38s   or equivalent and 
then tune the guitar down
so that it wouldn't be bad for the neck.

I always thought it would be really cool to have guitar tuned C C C C C 
C,   just for the sake of
overtone manipulation only.

Anyone have thoughts on this?    would I seriously screw up my strat to 
do that?

Additionally,  I wanted to try something like C C C C Eb Eb.

In this way you'd have open tuned barr minor chords with a very simple 
double bar up one fret for
major chords.

Distortion and Feedback just love simple open tunings.

I even thought if you set the action hi that you could use a normal 
slide on the first finger and a pinky slide
on the pinky for moeveable simple diadic chords.

I like the idea of using really heavy gauged strings just for their 
resonance value but , again,
am not sure if I"d screw my guitar up attempting it.

I'm just a drummer  (frater ritmacorum  as Rainer so cleverly puts it)  
so I await your collective guitar player wisdom).
There's a ton of young musicians in my town who are fascinated by the 
whole noise scene so I'm trying to put on a little mini
noise festival at Meta Music and mostly play guitar into it  (with maybe 
some Shenai, Zurna and Euphonium).

Towards that end, I just went and checked out the Steve Vai distortion 
pedal to possibly add to my
small arsenal of distortion pedals.............it looks really nice 
<salivate>.