Re: Baritone guitar strings/tuning?

[Per Boysen <perboysen@gmail.com>]

This thread turned into an interesting discussion where I learned a
lot. I tested the 27.78 with the typical Baritone set of .013 - .060
and tuned down both to A and to B. In both cases the sparkling magic
was totally gone down there in sloppy mud land. I guess Ted and Andy
are right about the higher tension causing my clarity of sound and
pronounced fundamentals, probably in combination with the thinner
strings as well. But at EADGBE a regular .010 set was just a little
bit too tense so I will try to tune down one whole step.

I have always loved the sound of high tension strings and with a
normal guitar scale the best sounding string tension becomes too hard
to bend. But on a Baritone neck even tense strings can easily be bent
three half tones.

While I had the trad Bari tuning I tried to replace the two mid
strings for much thinner tuned one octave higher, like in that Pat
Matheny article, and this tuning sounds great on chords but doesn't
precisely bring out the Tele soul like the thinner high tension setup.
I think I'd rather play another instrument than setting up a Bari Tele
in that highly specialized tuning. And I already have other guitars
well setup for drop-B metal riff recording, so it seems the regular
.010 is the winner.

Good hint about those Pyramid Nickel Round Wound strings! The
technical point seems to be that they use a round core and not a hex
core (that was introduced for manufacturing reasons). Will buy them
next time.

Greetings from Sweden

Per Boysen
www.perboysen.com
http://www.youtube.com/perboysen