Drop D vs. D Standard (whole step down)

[mtmartin71]

I'm going to set up my Reverend Daredevil for a lower register guitar. I've got a 3 guitars in E Standard, one Eb, and I'd like to set this Reverend up for a thicker sound, darker sound. What I'm contemplating is Drop D vs. D Standard. What are the pros and cons of the two both from a practical gigging standpoint as well as setting them up to play well. If I go D Standard, I will go with EXL 116s which are .11-.52 and if I go Drop D, I will go EXL 140s which are .10-.52.

[dspellman]

Why bother?

I dunno if you've seen the material on the new Line 6 Variax guitars (this is a generation 2 guitar, complete with magnetic picks as well as the Variax electronics) that should be appearing toward the end of summer. But even the older versions have a setup for storing a bunch of alternate tunings.

it works by pitch replacement; no string retensioning necessary. I have two of the older versions; a Variax 500 electric and a Variax 700 Acoustic. Essentially, you can preset whatever alternate tunings you like, but your guitar will remain on standard tuning as far as the string tension goes. If you want to play in D standard, you rotate the switch and play the guitar as if you're in D standard. What you hear out of the amp is D standard, but the strings are actually set to E standard. Ditto higher tunings (they call this "virtual capo") or Open G or whatever you like. Want thicker/darker? You can set any (and all) of the strings for up to an octave -- 12 half-steps -- down. You can also go at least five halfsteps up on any string (maybe more -- I have to check). Rather than fussing with string gauges and playing with lengths of garden hose and cutting new nuts and all that, you play one guitar and switch to new tunings on the fly. It's NOT like a Robot guitar where the strings are retensioned and you stand around strumming until it gets its act together. In fact, you can plug the Variax into an XT Live or an X3 Live or X3 Pro (rack) Pod, and program the whole mess so that you can change the tuning, the guitar model, the amp, effects and cabinets all at a single foot stomp. Makes playing stuff like Boston a lot easier <G>.

[stevel]

Originally Posted by mtmartin71

What are the pros and cons of the two both from a practical gigging standpoint as well as setting them up to play well.

What are you playing?

If you're playing Unchained (VH), Lay it Down (Ratt) or any other number of 80s dropped D (and actually, there are ones with the guitar tuned down to Eb, so "Dropped Db") songs I could see where that would be useful.

I don't know about the number of songs tuned down a whole step though. There are plenty in E and Eb. If you do it in D it seems like you'd be doing it mostly for a singer. Seems to me, most people went straight from Eb to 7-string guitars with low B, low A, and then those options tuned down a half step.

Remember with Dropped D you're going to have to relearn the fingerings for the low string - though if you play covers of songs written in that tuning you know they're already possible that way and it's all worked out for you already.

With tuning down to D, you won't have to relearn a string or any fingerings/scales - but, playing all those rock songs in E and Em as "F#" and "F#m" seems counterproductive (lazy players like me likes dem open strings :-) - again unless you're playing the whole song "as if it was in standard tuning" but sounding lower for a singer's sake (which could be quite practical actually).

But if you're going to do that, just go ahead and buy a Baritone Guitar. Those were made to be tuned in A, but peopled tuned them in (and made them in) B and C (of course you could use a capo on an A baritone).

Check out "Rock Lobster" by the B-52s - nice use of C tuned guitar (I assume baritone) there.

Best,
Steve

[stevel]

Here's a thought too - you could always use one of those "D-tuner" things - you know, you put it on in place of your low E tuning machine and you can flip the switch and go from E to Dropped D (or Eb to Dropped Db) etc.

Good only on non-floating bridges.

There are also capos with a "notch" in them so they only cover 5 strings - you can actually put a capo on the 2nd fret and your open chords will be "dropped E" - of course anything above the capo will still be standard tuning so you don't have to relearn scale fingerings etc.

HTH,
Steve

[Austinrocks]

had the thought that I could capo a D tuned guitar and play E and Eb, on a strat, never worked to the point of playing that way, capos just annoyed me.

A strat does sound great tuned two steps down, Jimi hendrix band of gypses is that way, pretty cool, have not found anything else in that tuning.

personally just picked up a second strat so I could have Eb and standard tuning, much happier, sounds like you have several guitars as well, so setting up to a D tuning wont be a problem, personally prefer open E or G tunings, the Open G has a D in the bass, so you might check that out.

[kleydj13]

I'm a pretty big fan of both drop d tuning and 10-52 gauge strings on my strat. Nice and fat.

[Austinrocks]

Originally Posted by kleydj13

I'm a pretty big fan of both drop d tuning and 10-52 gauge strings on my strat. Nice and fat.

used those as well on both my strats, really do alot things well, , really good for drop d tunings, dean markley light top heavy bottom blue steel 10 to 52, works for a lot of tunings as well. Open G, D one step down, the guitar does not have a tremolo, so have fun.

http://www.deanmarkley.com/Strings/E...eSteelEl.shtml

picked these up at a guitar show, sure other folks make them as well.

[mtmartin71]

Thanks so far. Some good things to think about. I had forgot about the new Variax.

[Austinrocks]

Originally Posted by mtmartin71

Thanks so far. Some good things to think about. I had forgot about the new Variax.

friend has a roland guitar synth, programmed tunings into, my problem was I could here the strings, they did not sound like what was coming out of the synth. Went back to just tuning my guitar for the tunings, expect the variax to be the same.

[Mike Fleming]

I've done the D thing before. It can be fun for pseudo- baritone licks, for one thing. Like Guitar Town. It's also good for tunes that would be in E but are a little high for your range, you can still rock the big E chord sound, vs trying to make the D shape or drop D work.

[uburoibob]

Originally Posted by dspellman

Why bother?

I dunno if you've seen the material on the new Line 6 Variax guitars (this is a generation 2 guitar, complete with magnetic picks as well as the Variax electronics) that should be appearing toward the end of summer. But even the older versions have a setup for storing a bunch of alternate tunings.

it works by pitch replacement; no string retensioning necessary. I have two of the older versions; a Variax 500 electric and a Variax 700 Acoustic. Essentially, you can preset whatever alternate tunings you like, but your guitar will remain on standard tuning as far as the string tension goes. If you want to play in D standard, you rotate the switch and play the guitar as if you're in D standard. What you hear out of the amp is D standard, but the strings are actually set to E standard. Ditto higher tunings (they call this "virtual capo") or Open G or whatever you like. Want thicker/darker? You can set any (and all) of the strings for up to an octave -- 12 half-steps -- down. You can also go at least five halfsteps up on any string (maybe more -- I have to check). Rather than fussing with string gauges and playing with lengths of garden hose and cutting new nuts and all that, you play one guitar and switch to new tunings on the fly. It's NOT like a Robot guitar where the strings are retensioned and you stand around strumming until it gets its act together. In fact, you can plug the Variax into an XT Live or an X3 Live or X3 Pro (rack) Pod, and program the whole mess so that you can change the tuning, the guitar model, the amp, effects and cabinets all at a single foot stomp. Makes playing stuff like Boston a lot easier <G>.

First - thanks for the heads up on the Variax Gen 2 stuff - I am most interested in this technology and have been since I saw the first demo at NAMM all those years ago...

Don't take this the wrong way, but I owned three Variax Gen 1 guitars and basses - a 300, a 700 and a 4-string bass. It's the quality of the guitars that was the problem for me. The electronics were great, but the only time I used the guitars was when I was recording and needed a particular sound, and only as a last resort. If you get used to playing guitars like Historic LPs, PRS CUs, Ken-era Parker Flys, there's a huge gulf between the Variax guitars and those. So much so that I was very much considering having a custom guitar built for the electronics (can't afford the Belew at $10k). And the bass weighed 16.5 lbs!!!

Anyway, I was praying that for Phase II they'd buy Parker or partner with someone like PRS, Anderson or Suhr. Hopefully, the guitars will be a LOT better. I LOVED the way they worked but hated the guitars the technology was installed on...

Bob

[BIGGERSTAFF]

I just tune one guitar to D, one to E, and one to Eb. The amount of time it takes to tune your E down to D is pretty miniscule, if you need dropped D for a song.

[dspellman]

Originally Posted by uburoibob

First - thanks for the heads up on the Variax Gen 2 stuff - I am most interested in this technology and have been since I saw the first demo at NAMM all those years ago...

Don't take this the wrong way, but I owned three Variax Gen 1 guitars and basses - a 300, a 700 and a 4-string bass. It's the quality of the guitars that was the problem for me. The electronics were great, but the only time I used the guitars was when I was recording and needed a particular sound, and only as a last resort.

Anyway, I was praying that for Phase II they'd buy Parker or partner with someone like PRS, Anderson or Suhr. Hopefully, the guitars will be a LOT better. I LOVED the way they worked but hated the guitars the technology was installed on...

A couple (perhaps more than a couple) of things have changed. The guitars (three versions, at the moment) have been designed by Jim Tyler. All three are available in custom-built American-made (by Tyler, natch) expensive models, and all three will be available in Korean-built models. All have magnetic pickups as well as the piezo-based Variax stuff. The piezos have been vastly improved to get rid of the occasional "pinging" sound of the previous version. The DSPs that run things are four times as powerful. For now (*ahem*), the models haven't changed, but they sound better (some, like the 12-strings with an alternate tuning, simply needed the extra processing power). The alternate tunings have been moved to a separate knob, so that you can apply an alternate tuning to any model that you have selected. All can be changed around in WorkBench (computer software) and saved as presets, and all can be switched on the fly from the guitar OR from the Pod X3 Pro or Live versions.

The guitars themselves include what are, essentially, an LP, a Strat and a "shredder" with most of what that entails. The LP-style guitar has an LP-type quad of controls, but two of them are the Variax controls, coupled with a master volume and tone. The neck heel is shaved ala the Gibson Axcess (a neck style I think should be on ALL LP-type guitars <G>). The strat is...uh...stratish, and the shredder is a 24-fretter with a non-tapered neck (the width tapers as usual, but the depth is uniform from first to 12th frets) and a flatter radius.

I visited Rich Renken at Line 6 week before last and got a chance to look them over; these are nothing at ALL like the old version 1 clunkers and frankly, I don't know that I can personally see a reason to look beyond the Korean-built versions, assuming that they come over maintaining the same quality I saw in the initial small batch. The quality is really nice. The old Variax 500 I have is a $100 CostCo Christmas Special by comparison. In fact, the main reason I bought the 500 on Clearance was to transplant the guts to a good guitar.

I have nits to pick with these guitars -- for now there's no Floyd available (though I'm sure there will be). I don't care for the standard quad type control arrangement on the LP, and the designs, while well executed (and with the exception of the neck heel on the LP version) are the same 50-year-old thing we've been using all along. I'm sure that's by intention -- the comfort level for some players in terms of familiarity will be easy to attain, but perhaps I was hoping for an iPod-like design coup that would knock my socks off. Unlike the first generation of Variax, these will look and feel like very high quality versions of what we see on the walls at GC. The fun will come when audiences see someone playing what looks like a LP making square-neck resonator sounds with a slide, then switching to what sounds like a Martin 0-18, and then switching to a bluesy strat in the quack position.

In terms of alternate tunings, these are really the way to go if you don't want to maintain a stable of guitars in various tunings. The Gibson Robot doesn't have the same range and winds some strings to cheese (and finger) slicing tensions while turning others into noodles. On the Robot, one whole section of tunings requires a string change; either the strings will break or the tuners will. And when you get the tension wound up, forget about bending. The Robot also takes a few seconds of strumming and whirring to get ready to go; it's not something you can do on the fly. With the Variax, you can either rotate the switch or (faster) stomp on either an X3 Live or the footboard for an X3 Pro (rackmount). With either of these, you can change all parameters of both the Variax and the X3 at once, between beats in the middle of a song. Worth noting that since you don't change the actual string tension, you remain at standard tuning on the guitar, and if you switch to the mag pickups, you'll be back there instantly as well. These will be highly acrobatic guitars, sonically speaking.

[HHB]

I use "Drop C " down a whole step w/ 6th string tuned down on one particular gig, I'm going for the swampy surfy low sound, I love it. I keep a Godin Radiator in this tuning, sounds awesome

[germs]

we accomodate the singer in my original band by tuning down CGCFAD exclusively. for me, comfort depends on scale length. i also find that certain gauges sound better on certain scales.

25.5 is 11's

24.75 is 12's