A-standard ADGCF

[danny-79]

In short who tunes there 5 string this way ? 

 

Im a four string player who has tuned DGCF for that long that that’s standard for me so the logical thing to do would be ADGCF 

 

just seeing ing how many of you do that as the A is pretty low !!! (By my ears anyways) 

 

cheers 

 

[Doctor J]

Yep, here. However, I seldom used the high string so I've set up a 4 string instead and flit between GDGC, ADGC, AEAD and BEAD as required. In my last band I was playing guitar instaed of bass and we tuned down to A with some songs in dropped G. On the bass, I've got a D'Addario .147 for the G/A/B string. It's serious business.

[danny-79]

I’ve got a 135 Elixir steel that I’ll try but will definitely look into the daddario suggest 

[alyctes]

12 minutes ago, Doctor J said:

Yep, here. However, I seldom used the high string so I've set up a 4 string instead and flit between GDGC, ADGC, AEAD and BEAD as required. In my last band I was playing guitar instaed of bass and we tuned down to A with some songs in dropped G. On the bass, I've got a D'Addario .147 for the G/A/B string. It's serious business.

 

I've tried similar things with a four-string.  How do you organise your setlist?  Are you retuning between songs?  I wound up taking two basses to gigs (EADG and DGCF).

Edited March 9, 2022 by alyctes

[Paulhauser]

I used that tuning for a few years and lately as well for a recording project. I used a .130-.045 set for practice and a .135-.050 set for the recordings. Bass were Spector Euro5 (practice) and Spector NS-5XL (recording).

The .135 was fine enough for me so never needed thicker strings... 

 

My current gig requires low A so I use a drop A tuning (AEADG) for those songs and ADADG for one song which is a lot easier to play because of a open D riff

[Doctor J]

1 hour ago, alyctes said:

 

I've tried similar things with a four-string.  How do you organise your setlist?  Are you retuning between songs?  I wound up taking two basses to gigs (EADG and DGCF).

These days I'm just recording. Gigging with the band, we would go from A to dropped G only and retune on the fly. One string is fine, but a full retune would require two instruments, definitely. In a previous band, I was using floating trems with locking nuts so I always brought two guitars, one for each tuning. We always made a point of practising swapping guitars/retuning during rehearsals in both bands. 15 seconds is more than enough time to do either. Any more than that and you're wasting set time. We also arranged the setlist in blocks, so at least two songs were played in the same tuning before any switcheroos. We made sure we could change quickly and discreetly while the singer was introducing the next song. The audience come to see your band play and listen to your music, not faff about.

Edited March 9, 2022 by Doctor J

[alyctes]

4 hours ago, Doctor J said:

These days I'm just recording. Gigging with the band, we would go from A to dropped G only and retune on the fly. One string is fine, but a full retune would require two instruments, definitely. In a previous band, I was using floating trems with locking nuts so I always brought two guitars, one for each tuning. We always made a point of practising swapping guitars/retuning during rehearsals in both bands. 15 seconds is more than enough time to do either. Any more than that and you're wasting set time. We also arranged the setlist in blocks, so at least two songs were played in the same tuning before any switcheroos. We made sure we could change quickly and discreetly while the singer was introducing the next song. The audience come to see your band play and listen to your music, not faff about.

 

Thanks.  That was pretty much what we wound up doing:  make sure the DGCF songs were in a single block.  Singer would blether about a song briefly, that would be long enough.

[Lfalex v1.1]

11 hours ago, alyctes said:

 

I've tried similar things with a four-string.  How do you organise your setlist?  Are you retuning between songs?  I wound up taking two basses to gigs (EADG and DGCF).

 

I use a capo on the second fret of a bass tuned to D standard to raise it to E standard. Works a treat once you get used to it. I've even started to use it for F standard on some Smiths songs and "Crime of the Century" because I'm lazy!

 

* unless you regularly use frets 19 & 20 or use loads of harmonics- they all move up by 2 positions with the capo on (as do the fretted notes, obviously) but they're not "on the dots" anymore

[alyctes]

5 hours ago, Lfalex v1.1 said:

 

I use a capo on the second fret of a bass tuned to D standard to raise it to E standard. Works a treat once you get used to it. I've even started to use it for F standard on some Smiths songs and "Crime of the Century" because I'm lazy!

 

* unless you regularly use frets 19 & 20 or use loads of harmonics- they all move up by 2 positions with the capo on (as do the fretted notes, obviously) but they're not "on the dots" anymore

 

I did try it.  At the time I couldn't get my head round it, partly because I couldn't get it to sound good on either bass.

[fretmeister]

I'm confused at the idea of swapping basses as described by some posts.

 

If you have ADGCF and never play lower than the A, why not just keep the bass in that tuning forever and learn all the songs for that tuning? There's more than enough range.

 

[danny-79]

5 hours ago, fretmeister said:

I'm confused at the idea of swapping basses as described by some posts.

 

If you have ADGCF and never play lower than the A, why not just keep the bass in that tuning forever and learn all the songs for that tuning? There's more than enough range.

 

 

Thats always been my theory

DGCF = extra lower notes where you need them most, just move positions up the neck, it’s only open stings that are affected and I only ever bounce off them anyways. 

 

So going ADGCF is about the only logical thing to do for me as being new to playing a fiver I’m getting lost in every direction possible with BEADG lol 😂