“Down-Tuning” Your 12-String

hi everybody today we're going to talk about down tuning down tuning on the 12 string is really common when I first got my very first 12 string back in the night mid-1970s I I bought a 1970s takamini which back in that time they made copies of Martin instruments and of mine this is like a copy of a d18 12 string and I put for a set of strings on it and tune it up and just tuning it up bang I break the octave on the 12 string go back to the music store buy a couple of extras put one on play for a couple hours bang it goes again and I'm going what's the deal with this sorry I check everything for a Burrs up here make sure there's nothing sharp on the tuning peg check the nut and the bridge everything's fine and I'm complaining about it and the guy at the music store tells me because I'm only like about 15 snow I was about 17 at the time I guess and uh the the guy tells me uh well you know you should tune the thing down I said what do you mean tune it down it says yeah most 12 string players tune it down a half step or a whole step and I was like wow that's an idea so it's kind of weird and most people would say well that's not a good idea because if you go to play with somebody else you're not going to be in tune with them you're going to have to use a capo if you tune down one half step and you're going to play with the guitar she's in standard tuning you have to put a cable on the first fret if you're tuned down a whole step then you'd have to put a capo on the second fret it's easy enough to do but it can be an inconvenience for uh for some folks and some people are just like well I never want to change anything the guitar is supposed to be tuned e a d g b e I'm never tuning anything different than that and they get real dogmatic about the thing there and they'll say oh my my 1950s Martin guitar has has had the same strings on it for you know 50 years and it never goes out of tune and it's and I've kept it tuned to an E and then it didn't warp or anything on it but if you look at what they do they never play past the third fret you know they're just from gcd and they're happy with that they can't play anything that's particularly athletic on the the thing and that's fine if that's what they enjoy doing but down tuning gives you some options and today we're going to talk about those particular options so my Ovation here this is a 1977 they're abouts ovation this is tuned in standard tuning now there I'm finger picking standard tuning is great especially for like accompaniment stuff [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] wonderful jangly Rich strong mid-range and there's enough punch in the bass to really give you a good accomplishment but it's that high jangly high end that we love to hear that's what draws us to the the 12 string in most cases just that sound It's a Wonderful sound thank you [Music] but there are some options if I want to play something maybe kind of in the vein of Leo cocky or something [Music] there's something that leaves me wanting to hear a little more bass a little more oomph to it this is where down tuning comes in also this guitar the string tension is really high I have really super light strings on it the lightest strings I can usually find typically are dionario extra lights which are a nine to about a 45 on the top or my faithful viewer Oscar Stern he's going to put it in the comment that you can buy such and such a brand a string temastic infeld or LaBella or something some strings that cost you like three times as much as regular but you can find strings that'll have like a six or a seven he always tells me about those strings I've never tried them yet I tell him that I probably can't feel a six or seven underneath my fingers I played bass as well as the the 12 string and I'm used to big old fat strings so it's like if I put a a six on there it'd be like thinner than a human hair I think I don't know that I would even feel like there was a string underneath my finger so it doesn't work for me I buy what's commercially available and what's affordable I have eight 12 strings and trying to keep them in strings is enough to keep me broke half the time anyways so this is standard tuning I'm going to bring a guitar here in a second that's tuned one half step down and you can check out what we got there okay stand by different guitar same strings these again are those D'Addario 9 to 45 extra light gauge this guitar obviously there's going to be some sound differences it's a bigger body than the Ovation uh it's different Woods uh different different scale length but you're gonna mainly hear the difference in the sound that's caused by the down tuning this guitar is tuned one half step low thank you [Music] one of the things that you feel right off playing this guitar is that the string tension is considerably lower just tuned a half step down the strings don't have as much tension on them I rarely break the the uh the high G string here on it because it's tuned to an F sharp instead of a g now down tuning this just means if you hooked up your your electronic tuner here instead of reading an e for this string it's tuned to a D sharp the a string is tuned to a G sharp the D string is tuned to a C sharp so everything is a half step low now it still retains a lot of Sparkle but there's a little more bass response [Music] foreign so it has a richness to it that the Ovation doesn't have it also has a little more sustain because there's less tension on the top now if you have a guitar and you say you've been tuning a standard tuning and you tune your 12 string down now to it you may notice that you have to tweak the truss rod a little bit because the difference in the the tension might make the the the truss rod will pull back on the neck a little bit more so you may end up with some notes up here and that are just too low and may Buzz a little bit so you have to decide kind of where you're going to tune it and then kind of keep it at that tuning I'm going to tell you another trick about that in just a minute with the next guitar so this you hear the difference though between the the 12 string and standard in the 12 string a half step low let's now check a couple of guitars that are tuned a whole step low again a different guitar different body style different Woods that's all going to have a little bit of difference in the tone of the instrument but not as substantial as the strings and the string tension in this case I've got different strings on here these are a Martin standard light the this goes from a 10 to a 47 on the top if I believe if I remember correctly and it's a bronze or phosphor bronze mix so these are a little bit heavier strings than what were on the previous two instruments now in this case this is tuned a whole step low so on my tuner my E string reads as a d my a string reads as a g now my chords and everything are all the same it's just tuned lower [Music] now if I'm going to play let's do that Leo kottke's kind of style thing [Music] you hear how much more depth this has in the uh the low end man it's just powerful and this is tuned a whole step down that's it uh the heavier strings allow me to have more mass moving but because it's tuned down a whole step the string tension is reduced so string tension wise compared to this guitar and the last one I just play is about the same but this one has a whole lot deeper low end than the than the other one simply because there's more mass moving the top and on that low end so this one now if I was going to do some strummy kind of stuff on this one tune the whole step low let's try this foreign [Music] it can work but it doesn't have quite sorry about that I just bang the microphone with my my hand there it doesn't have quite the the richness of the high end that the Ovation or the Alvarez that I was just playing that they have and that higher register the standard tuning really excels in that area so if you're going to have a guitar that you do in that kind of jangly strummy stuff standard tuning is probably going to work for you let me come back with an one more instrument and then we'll wrap up different guitar again this is my guild large body chamber about the same size as the Alvarez but it's a little bit deeper it has a arched back so there's a larger Sound Chamber it moves more air this one is tuned to whole step low [Music] this one has a little bit a little bit heavier strings yet even though it's tuned a whole step low this one uses Martin flexible core bronze strings that have I think it goes a 10 to a 52 on the top so the base end is a little bit heavier on this one this gives me a little more robust deep sound I call this guitar the piano mainly because it's it's black handed and when you play like the low you can just feel this thing rattling in your chest it just the vibrations it has is great now this is the one I would default to for doing any kind of like Leo katki fast picking stuff just because the base depth on this one is foreign [Music] so this has like just a ton of low end partially that's the choice of the strings and because of the string tension scale length is about the same between the last two or three guitars and but just having a little more mass vibrating here with these lower strings gives you more bass in and the string tension is just a little bit more but this is tuned uh down a whole step to a D in the past I have had guitars that I've tuned down to a C sharp that's about as low as as I would normally go occasionally I dabbled around with uh tuning down to a low C and when I would do that I would actually go up to a medium gauge of string there used to be a brand called d'angelico they still make guitars but they don't you can't find their strings anymore and they used to make a wonderful brass wound string set that their light was about the equivalent of a medium it went from an 11 down to a 54 or something like that the the tension on those was great and the cool thing was it had a wound string doctor string for the a so that just had a real thumpy kind of sound that worked great for those real low tunings and you can tune down to a c with that one comfortably and it's and it sounded really solid and really great I have had mediums on this one before and uh just the the darkness of the tone of this instrument was just too much for it so I preferred to have the to tune it to D and then just use the uh the the Martin flexible core strings on there if you have seen the old Stella guitars like what Leadbelly played those instruments have a longer scale length like a 26 or 26 and a half inch scale length they're braced a little bit differently and one of the things that but with those they are tuned up with medium strings but they tune them all the way down to a c so that is this real Rich deep bass sound on those that gives them their characteristic sound and you could be walking the bass strings on it but if you were to tune one of those guitars up to with those kind of strings up to concert pitch it would kind of fold in half the top would probably collapse on it the neck might pull up it's like a disastrous things could happen just a note you if you have a new 12 string and it's under warranty you may want to check with your warranty to see what the manufacturer recommends uh only Taylor and Ovation were really the only manufacturers I ever saw that could warranty their guitars all the way up to concert pitch there are 12 strings to concert pitch everybody else recommended that you tune a half step down Martin Gibson others my Ovation up here that I played it's a 77 I tune it the standard pitch it's fine with that as long as I use light enough strings I would not want to tune my my moon guitar the one in the middle back over here up to a standard pitch with like like a a standard gauge light on it it can handle that but over the Long Haul I don't think that would be particularly good for the instrument so it's you can leave a comment and give me your opinions on it like I said I've known people who say like oh you should always tune a concert pitch and you're you're and but they're not after the same musical effects that I'm after trying to get those low sounds that richness uh Leo kottke's own signature model has just tuned down to like a c or a C sharp and it's strung up with like the John Pierce medium strings and it's braced according it's even braced differently but they don't recommend that that guitar be tuned up to standard pitch they recommend that that one be tuned to that really low almost baritone tuning so it's something worth checking out but be but be aware that 12-string players do that when you listen to somebody and you go like wow that's a really great sound but you're having trouble getting that sandal on the guitar you might want to investigate whether or not they're down tuning and you can play around with that and you may find some things that you really really enjoy about it uh like subscribe share and leave me a comment let me know whether you're down to it or not I just did a survey and I was surprised at how many people tuned down to D I figured a few people might tune down to like a like a D sharp E flat whatever or but I have a surprise to see how many people tuned down to D about 40 percent of you tune down to D awesome I'm in that same Club the guitar just sounds great in that range and it feels great too as you tuned lower let me know so check out in the community and fill out that survey and thanks for watching this video and we'll catch you next time here on the channel bye

Channel: GuitarStudio

Views: 22,728

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Id: RSlyS_adYs8

Length: 17min 5sec (1025 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 02 2023