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Bass'n'CBG Tuning Help Please ?

Posted by Diglydog on September 16, 2013 at 12:30pm in Performances, How to Play, Lessons, Concerts

I've just built a hybrid with one bass string and 3 guitar strings and have no idea which strings/tuning to use for a bluesy sound.  At present it has a bass 'A' string tuned to A and the 3 wound strings off a medium guitar set tuned DAD.   It sounds odd.

I know little about music theory and would welcome any suggestions for strings and tunings.  I have the full bass and guitar sets of strings available.  The scale length of the CBG is 26.5 inches.

Many thanks :-)

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Replies

  • jeff maurer September 18, 2013 at 8:54am
    Your scale length is more like that found on barritone guitars so I would recomend medium heavy strings. Keep your a bass string and for the guitar strings use an a d and g string. Tune the d and g up one step to e and a and you will have a e a tuning. With your bass string tuned to a it will be one octave down from your set of guitar strings. I think this is what moreland and arbuckle did for their song purgatory. Search for it they put up a good video of the song last year.
    • Diglydog > jeff maurer September 18, 2013 at 4:05pm

      Thanks for the advice Jeff, I'll give it a go.

      ETA: yeah, 'Purgatory' sounds great !

  • Ron "Oily" Sprague September 16, 2013 at 3:09pm
    Well, since it sounds odd already, you could try tuning it D-E-A-D....>:-E

    But seriously...try tuning the bass string down to G. You could then leave the D-A-D. Gives a variant of DADGAD tuning, not great for blues, but good for other stuff. Or tune the bass string up to B, the thickest D up to E...then you got B-E-A-D. Or same thing, except tune that low E up to G, gives you B-G-A-D. Or tune the A bass down to G, the middle A to B, and the small D up to E, gives you GDBE, good for bluegrass and some blues. You could also use the middle 3 of a guitar set, and tune them ADF#, while tuning the A bass up to B. Lots of ways to experiment...
    • Diglydog > Ron "Oily" Sprague September 16, 2013 at 3:20pm

      Thanks Ron,  I'll be playing around with the setup to get the action right so I'll have a go with some of those tunings as well.  I think part of the problem was that the action was way too high, so the intonation was bad.  I've lowered the bridge and it sounds a bit better.  I'll file the nut down tomorrow.

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