All This Downtuning

FractalAudio said:
"I was playing in Drop B but now I just play in B standard".

Why even play guitar then? Just play a six string bass.
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Because playing guitar in B is fun. It doesnt play like a guitar in standard (or down a whole step) so one can approach it a little differently.

I'll take a downtuned 6 over a 7.

The real question is why did Taylor make a baritone acoustic but make it an 8-string (not the way you think).
 
Bass player are like... "Hey bro, stay in your lane!"

I would say that they are just trying to compensate for something... :p;)

But some of these guys (and girls) are just incredible players! It's nice to see technique making a come back.
 
I don’t understand how to go about setting up a guitar when there’s so little tension on the neck. It must be a super-high-gain-only thing.
 
It's fun. Whole different set of balls when you're in the lower tunings that ya just can't get from E-standard. Vai and Petrucci are entirely to blame for my desire to go lower. Between Dream Theater's Awake and Vai's "Bad Horsie", I've been floating around drop-C/B for about 25 years now.

There was a period, 20+ years ago when nu-metal came out and I couldn't stand the stuff. I was born in '82, so all my peers were into Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, etc, while I was sitting there pissed off that no one cared about how well I could sweep pick. Then I went and saw Korn live and it totally changed my appreciation for low tunings. Hearing those guitars live, once they actually started caring about definition, it was like a wall. Sevendust in a small club was another one....just walloped with these huge guitars.

It's easy to discredit if you're listening to just the chugga chugga aspects, but especially these days, the kids are bringing guitar heroics to a whole new level. But even the guys who were slumped into the nu-metal thing like Clint from Sevendust or Jim Root from Slipknot, they're monster guitarists and in the case of Clint, the dude is such an incredible songwriter that you can take any Sevendust song he's written, play it on an acoustic and market it in any genre you want.

 
AndyOrr said:
I don’t understand how to go about setting up a guitar when there’s so little tension on the neck. It must be a super-high-gain-only thing.
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I've got guitars in E, drop D, d-standard, drop-C and drop-B, the tension is pretty damn close between all of them. They make different gauges for a reason! And hell, one of my Strats in standard tuning with 11's has less tension on it than my drop-C guitar does.
 
I’ve switched to 7 string almost exclusively. I use the piezo on it for acoustic performances and getting that low D note is almost worth it entirely. Crafting ways to play extensions of the other notes on the string for open C, minors, etc. And for many drop D songs, I don’t need to change tuning (some of course use the quickness of the 1-finger chord so it’s not possible).

Took a while to get used to it and I’m still not completely comfortable, but it’s nice to have that lower range in a solo or 2 guitar acoustic duo.

slightly off topic but yeah.
 
The band Royal Blood only has 2 members. The singer plays bass and there's a drummer. It's a 4 string bass but the riffs sound like a down tuned guitar.

 
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