Standard guitar tuning?

[teknoman]

I own a 12 string Warr Phalanx.. my teacher casually mentioned that if I could tune it to standard guitar tuning on both sets? My problem is that this being a 34 inch,i believe in string length ,the strings would break,esp the e.. anybody have any ideas? i tried contacting Mark Warr,to no avail....

[arsacane]

Maybe he was referring to use a mayor 3rd between the 2nd and 3rd string and not to the pitches themselves. You should be able to lower the highest strings by half a step without any problems or you can decide to raise the other strings by a semitone.

I don't think you can easily get a E on the first string with a 34'' scale. Maybe with Gary Goodman strings, and I'm not sure...

Cheers, Daniel.

[Mad Monk]

I briefly used .007s to get to E on my 34" Stick. Easily broken, the tone was thin and the output low in volume relative to the other strings.

Standard guitar tuning is a compromise which allows open strings to be used in certain keys. Tappers don't use open strings, but they might like the ability to read standard notation more easily in straight 4ths.

Does your teacher play a 2-region instrument...?

Of course there are some excellent tappers who use dual guitar, so don't let me discourage you if that's what you want to do.


Mad Monk.

[traktor]

Mad Monk has a point, but something that might work is ...

Tune to standard guitar at fret three.

Fret Three has a "scale length" more similar to normal guitar neck lengths.

Just think of it as a standard guitar which gives you three lower notes on each string ...


-- Traktor

[TheEclectic]

I tune all of my tap instruments and my 6 string basses to guitar intervals. That way I can transfer all of my scale and chord patterns to all of my instruments. However, they do not all start with the low E - one of the basses starts on a low low B and the Tap instruments start on a D.