On baritone necks? I've been playing alot in Drop B and A# and its just bad. All buzzy and my strings are floppy as hell, too bad it sounds so damn good. Isnt the way to remedy this to use a baritone neck? How does that effect anything and how different is playing with one?
Whats the deal...
- Thread starter rapfohl09
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Playing on a baritone neck is different, but you'll get used to it pretty quickly I think. Imagine picking up a bass for the first time. It's always a little awkward, but in an hour its already starting to feel more normal or natural. Switching to baritone is just like that, except not nearly as drastic.
Basically if you are reasonably comfortable switching instruments and such, you'll be fine.
Basically if you are reasonably comfortable switching instruments and such, you'll be fine.
OK, I've had my baritone tele for a couple of months now, let me try - the baritone is like getting a 24 fret neck, but the extra two frets are lower than the standard ones instead of higher. If you capo2, you basically have a strat neck. So the longer scale drops you a full step at the same string tension - C standard (drop C#, is that what you'd call it?) on a regular neck will be in Bb standard (drop A#?) on a baritone neck with the same tension. I was using a set of daddario .013 - .062 and tuning to B standard, which gave me enough string tension but it still felt too much like a guitar, and A standard was just too loose. I wanted a feel closer to a bass, with nice rich wound strings so I went to Ernie Ball .014 - .068 which is just right - B standard is nice and very snappy (can't bend much though) and A standard is good enough. Playabilty - long reaches on the lower frets are harder, but it's not a huge difference and chording is not very different. If you play super fast scale-based stuff it may be harder than it is for me with my pokey old school music. One annoying thing: Because the strings are thicker, it feels like the nut is a bit narrower. I'd get a 1.75 nut if I had the choice again.
Short version: Get much heavier strings, it'll make more difference than the baritone scale length, but if you want to get all the way to A, then yeah get a baritone. Try the Ernie Ball baritone set on your regular guitar (get ready to ream out the nut) before you get a new neck.
Max, what are you going on about?
Short version: Get much heavier strings, it'll make more difference than the baritone scale length, but if you want to get all the way to A, then yeah get a baritone. Try the Ernie Ball baritone set on your regular guitar (get ready to ream out the nut) before you get a new neck.
Max, what are you going on about?
Xplorervoodoo
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Max said:
Hah, yeah I was totally expecting a Jerry Seinfeld joke when I clicked on this topic...
rockskate4x
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I think I remember someone on this board using a normal 25.5 inch scale neck but using heavy strings and moving the hartail bridge a little farther away from the neck than usual to build his baritone guitar. I don't remember who that was.
I love my baritone. I go down to drop A with it. A standard would be achievable too. It basically lets you get that low without the floppiness and buzziness in your strings. I use Daddario 13-56 strings, and that baby shakes the house when i turn up the gain. The last 3-4 frets on the low A string are buzzy, but hey, thats what the next string down is for. If you downtune, try one, youll be pleasantly surprised
rockskate4x
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when you intonate a guitar you are moving the saddles in the bridge farther away from the original scale length. In fact normally the only string that hits the 25.5 inch location on the saddle is the high e. If you want to intonate the strings even lower, you have to move the saddles farther away than the original bridge location allows. So the bridge itself must be moved.
Rockskater - ah, how to begin with this one. Intonation is not the same as extended scale. There's no such thing as 'intonating lower'. Intonation corrects for your finger pulling on the string when you fret it, so the notes are more or less in tune BOTH on the open strings AND on the fretted strings. Long scale guitars are increasing the overall scale length, and the frets therefore need to be further apart. Moving the bridge back without changing the location of the frets would result in a very, very weird (bad) sounding guitar. The only place this makes sense is on a fretless.
rockskate4x
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nope not that one...
Actually he's kinda right. To get it to intonate right, all the strings need to be slightly LONGER than the scale length... and the heavier the string, the more you need to compensate. You can see this to some extent in the stagger of your saddles, but it's much more obvious on some many-stringed basses... If you put obscenely heavy strings on a standard-scale guitar, you could theoretically bottom out the intonation screws and have to move the bridge a little.
However, if you find yourself doing that, you should buy a bass and/or re-examine your life.
However, if you find yourself doing that, you should buy a bass and/or re-examine your life.
I could actually see moving the bridge a few mm - my low C string (it's a 68) doesn't quite intonate properly with the saddle pulled all the way back as far as it can go. Moving the whole bridge (or just shortening that one saddle) a tiny amount would help, and would still leave plenty of movement for the other strings.
rockskate4x
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See, tfarny, this guy knows what I'm talking about!
Super Turbo Deluxe Custom
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If string tension is the concern, instead of down tuning a standard set of six-string strings, buy a 7 string set and throw away the high E. It's kind of like when the guy from fear factory praised his 7 string because down tuning a 6 string for years was nothing but trouble. Changing string gauge had never occurred to him I guess.
Nick Ellingworth
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Super Turbo Deluxe Custom said:
That's what I've done with my Epiphone SG, it holds at B standard (and drop A) really nicely and the string tension is just right. Although I was shocked when I didn't need to adjust the intonation at all. :laughing7:
Of course since the stock pickups are really muddy sounding it's only useful for doom metal or post metal but that doesn't bother me as I changed it to B/drop A so I could play that sort of stuff, all I have to do is run a few distortion effects into each other and then put the resulting mess though a delay pedal and I sound similar to the likes of Sunn O))). :icon_biggrin:
I don't know how this will sound with metal, but - flatwound strings are higher tension than roundwounds, so a set of medium electric jazz strings (.013-.056?) might make it that much easier to get where you want to go. I wonder if they would work with a metal-type rig.
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