Why Do Strats Sound Better Tuned To Eb?

so what do jimi hendrix robin trower eric johnson jeff beck billy corrigan doyle bramhall all have in common it's pretty obvious they're all strat guys but they're also known for tuning their strats down to e flat down a half step and i actually think there's a few really good reasons for that chief among them for some reason strats sound way better tuned down a half step now in my opinion i think it's kind of hard to argue the fact that strats just sound better tuned down i mean yes that is subjective but i mean let's be real they all sound killer tuned on e flat but the question i have is why i think tuning to e-flat works particularly well on stratocasters whereas it doesn't work as well on telecasters and certainly not on les pauls or pretty much any gibson instrument for that matter any gibson i've ever played a half step down kind of just feels like a muddy dark slinky mess to play it doesn't really work but on a stratocaster it's magical they sound better they feel better there's more sustain it's like the instrument's true voice comes out when you tune down a half step [Music] [Applause] what you gonna do now [Music] [Applause] [Music] now jimi hendrix is without a doubt one of the most famous guitar players ever but certainly one of the most famous strat players ever and probably the guy most well known for playing an e flat now he didn't always tune down to e flat there's examples like purple haze or wind cries mary that are in standard tuning but a large part of hendrix's catalog is played with the strat tuned down a half step to e flat now the truth is we'll probably never know exactly why jimmy tuned down all the time but we can speculate i mean there's some pretty common reasons why most players tune down a half step one of the most common ones being well it probably fit his vocal range better tuning down a half step and playing in e flat probably made it easier for him to sing a lot of the tunes especially on a live gig on tour when he was singing night after night after night now i think another good reason he would have tuned his strat down a half step was because it makes bending so much easier and i think there's a lot of credence to this idea especially up in this 12th position e flat minor pentatonic shape these big bends were so much easier to grab [Music] but i actually think there was another reason that jimmy favored tuning down to e flat they may not know that before jimi hendrix was jimi hendrix he had a long past of being a hired gun guitar player he came up playing in the chitlin circuit in the south and a lot of popular up-and-coming r b artists such as the eisley brothers and little richard now most if not all of those bands had horns and pianos in them as primary instruments and if you know anything about playing with horn players and piano players or keys players you know that they oftentimes favor keys like e flat a flat and b flat especially for improvising specifically in that style of music the up and coming rock and roll scene the r b scene of the early 60s it would have made sense when jimmy was playing with acts like little richard that they would have been playing in the key of a flat or e-flat for example so if you're a young jimi hendrix and you know that you're going to be spending most of the set in a flat key like b flat e flat or a flat why not just tune your whole guitar down a half step and not have to do as much transposing or playing in weird positions on the neck this is something i've read in the past a few times and it's stuck with me as a really good reason of why he would have started playing an e flat and i think once he got out and started playing his own original stuff it made sense for him to stick in those keys and that tuning and the feel of the guitar that he was so used to when he was coming up [Music] [Applause] so those are some of the reasons that may explain why hendrix went with e flat in the first place but what about all of the other famous strat players that have favored tuning down why did they do it well i think it's because this particular guitar design favors being tuned down a half step but in order to explain those we need to pull out some armchair physics first of all is scale length now i think this explains why tuning down on a fender generally sounds better than tuning down on a gibson if you don't know scale length is the distance between the saddles on your bridge and the nut basically the playable length of the string on fenders typically they are 25 and a half inches so it's 25 and a half inches from here to here whereas on a gibson it's 24 and three quarter inches it's a shorter scale length now scale length affects things like string tension but it also affects the tone of the instrument generally the harmonics on a longer scale length instrument are going to be spread a little bit further apart which is going to give it a little bit more bell-like tone where a shorter scale length instrument like a gibson can give it more of a warm tone now this is kind of a generalization there's a lot of other factors that go into the tone of a guitar like the pickups and body construction but that's another video now i think tuning down a half step on a longer scale length guitar like a strat accentuates the bell-like tones and the clarity that you get from the single coil pickups the lower register of the guitar especially the low e flat and a-flat strings really tends to bring out and to my ear especially on the bridge pickup it's a little bit clearer and cuts through a little bit more so that explains the differences between a fender and a gibson but what about different fenders why doesn't a telly sound as good tune down a half step in my opinion there's two main reasons for this first of all bridge design the bridge design on a strat is completely different than a tele bridge and i don't know exactly why but i think the strat bridge is better suited to being tuned down a half step i.e having less tension on it now hear me out this is what i meant a second ago when i said some armchair physics i'm by no means qualified to make this statement i have no college degree or education especially in something as complex as physics and all of the math this is just a hunch that i have strats have three pickups obviously and if you know anything about pickups you know that they are essentially made of magnets magnus and copper wire but having three pickups means you have three magnetic fields sitting right below the strings meaning these magnets are applying a force to each one of these strings now i think the three pickups and three magnetic fields are actually working to deaden the strings when you play a chord the strings are ringing but they get slowed down they get pulled by the magnetic field supplied by the pickups i believe that by tuning down a half step you are loosening the string tension thus allowing the strings to vibrate a little more easily i.e they ring longer and they ring with more energy giving the guitar more sustain and a better overall tone this is why i think single pickup guitars sound so good you only have one pickup here one magnetic field sitting close to the bridge and these things ring like a bell [Music] [Applause] another thing that i've noticed in playing my strat tuned down a half step is it seems to work way better with fuzz pedals and heavy distortion again i think the looser string tension is giving the guitar a little something more that's interacting with the fuzz pedal in a different way making it do what i really want it to do so if you listen to this riff tune down a half step versus in standard tuning i think you'll hear what i'm talking about [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so for me this was a pretty important revelation i've never really been what you would call a strat guy i think it is kind of weird that we identify ourselves partially by what instruments we play or what we don't play but i've never really identified with this guitar for whatever reason it just never really sat well with me even though my first guitar was a strat and even though so many of my favorite players played strats for whatever reason i just never really gravitated towards this guitar i've never really liked the way the bridge pickup on a strat sounds i've always preferred a telly over a strap bridge and i never really loved the two and four positions but i noticed that when i tuned down all of that changed when i went down a half step it completely changed the character of this guitar and it became something that now i reach for more often than i ever thought i would and personally i think that's kind of crazy just tuning the guitar down completely changed how i felt about the whole instrument but it did and it has opened me up to strats i will start playing strats way more now knowing that i like them better tuned down to e flat versus standard and it's opened me up to wanting to try new things with the strat why stop at e flat why not go all the way down to d i'd probably put some heavier strings on here and have to change the setup on the bridge like the spring tensions and stuff but why not go down to d and see what happens if it works in e flat why not go down another half step but all that to say now the strat makes sense to me now i get this guitar i understand why so many people love it i understand why this is so many people's first choice and their main instrument it just took me experimenting and changing it around a little bit from what i would normally play to find that out and i think that's sort of the lesson here don't be afraid to experiment and try new things don't be stuck in your ways don't be so dogmatic and fundamentalist by saying things like oh i'm not a strat guy or i don't play these amps or whatever because the reality is you were probably missing out on something that you wouldn't have had access to or wouldn't have known about had you not tried it i'm talking to myself here by the way so all in all i like the strat tuned down a half step i think all strats should be sent from the factory in e flat fender if you're watching something to consider probably you're not going to do that but still and if you have a strat at home and you've never played it a half step down try it out you might really dig it but i want to know what you think does strats really sound better tuned down or am i just acting crazy let me know in the comments section down below if you want to support the channel sign up for the green room linked down below we just relaunched it and all access pass which will get you access to all my video courses the green room forum all my digital products like kemper presets and helix presets all that stuff linked down below in the description also don't forget sunday august 9th 2020 we have the next episode of backstage live coming up where i will be primarily playing this guitar so be sure to check that out if you haven't already and if you're watching this in the future you can see the episode here and if you haven't done so already please subscribe down below really helps the channel out anyways thank you so much for watching i hope you enjoyed today's video my name is rhett shull and remember there is no plan b

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 694,092

Keywords: Fender, Stratocaster, Strat, Tuning, Eb Tuning, Half Step Tuning, Jimi Hendrix, electric guitar, Rhett Shull, Why do strats sound better, why do you tune, why do you tune a guitar

Id: 4QsMIG3dGjk

Length: 12min 21sec (741 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020