Question for Tom

[Barry]

Tom,

Our band is going to start using an Eb tuning for vocal reasons . Would like your thoughts on what i might expect as far as neck adjustments ,string guages, etc.. I would think if there is going to be any neck adjusting issues that would not surface immediately ? I use 10 - 46 strings at the moment .

[Son of Anderson]

i dont play in live setings, so my persepctive is a bit skewed.

My only concern would be the breakage of strings. make sure you have two guitars, becuase you wont want to be tuning back and forth, and ive broken quite a few string tuning those bad boys up and down.


that kind of goes without saying though.

[tom]

to me, .011's tuned to Eb feel pretty close to .010's at pitch. your same gauge tuned down a half step will probably feel pretty sloppy. if you stay with that gauge and tuning you may need to take a slight bit of tension off the neck. i would also think you would need to re intonate as the tension will be noticably softer and tension and pitch are criticly related.
so after all that blar blar, try it and if you like it make the necessary adjustments.

[tom]

also, if you go to .011's, use the set with an .049 for the low E. if you use a .052, you may need to open up the bottom few nut slots.