I'm a fan of sonic youth and when I was tuning it to learn a song (Total Trash, great song you should check it out) I thought, could all these different tunings affect my guitar or string life? Teenage riot for example requires you to tune the bottom E up 3 frets, keep A the same, tune D down 3 frets, G down 5, B down 7 and top E down 9. My guitar is a squier VM jaguar with the shitty stock bridge but it doesn't move down I put tape round the poles so it's a tighter fit in the body and doesn't move down. My strings are daddario 11s
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I bought a Tyler Variax of Chalky so i could find new tunings without messing with the strings (it allows you to programme tunings in) and when i had one i liked and had a couple of riffs/sings with, i'll tune one of my guitars to that tuning.
If you're in London and want to jam in all manner of weird tuning, hook me up. I live for it!
Yup. You may find issues using standard string set gauges though - some of the tunings are pretty extreme as you probably know so you might want to experiment with gauges. I'm sure there will be info on fan sites on gauges that they used, this site has good info on the tunings used, but not gauges as far as I can tell from a quick look.
http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/tab/tuning.html
From experience, I'd be wary of tuning up by more than 3 semitones. In this case I'd be looking at custom string sets.
Phil Mcknight did a youtube vid where he put various brands of strings on the same guitar, and each time tuned up to see at what point they would snap.
It was fairly even across the board I think, but hell, even tuning a new set up
to pitch makes me a little scared haha.
if you like them with zing and buzz in, maybe better to keep a second (secondary) guitar in any extreme tuning to one side, to alternate with your main (most commonly used) tuning. if you are only using it for a couple of songs that extreme tuning guitar can be pretty inexpensive as long as the pickups do enough to hit the spot. sy used a lot of junky bashed up guitars early on so they could switch around without fuss.
if i am using one guitar for all then i tend to tune to xyz whatever, then try to get what i need done in that tuning to a certain stage i can leave to come back to (from idea to recorded demo) as a complete self-contained episode. and then i move on to the next thing. rather than just be winding up and down every hour.
partly because my head likes to be in a tuning for a while to feel that space. but also because of that zingy thing. strings that sound overstretched and clanky and flat don't usually get me where i want to go.
btw if you are using 11s with a wound third and you are having trouble with them breaking, try switching to an unwound. being so thin and yet still ridgy they are sometimes not very happy about being dragged to and fro across some nuts and bridges repreatedly. smoothing the way with graphite and filing snagginess can help, as can a roller bridge.