Speaking of Robert Fripp, I just saw him with King Crimson in concert last night with Tony Levin on bass. Absolutely killer band and show. 3 drummers on full drum kits. Sadly he played his Les Paul in what appeared to be normal standard tuning for the whole show - I was watching for some NST magic, but the set-list stayed close to their mainstay catalog.
Anyway, I've recently been experimenting with what I'm calling "double extended range tenor" on short-scale 6-strings - the Les Paul PeeWee, to be exact.
They are tiny Les Pauls at 19" scale [19.5 on some]. That means the neck is a Les Paul neck, just shorter, and there are a ton of options for Les Paul upgrades.
I've mine tuned EbBbFCGD with string gauges from .56 on the bottom to .008 on the top. I was going for FCGDAE but the high string kept breaking past D#, so I settled on everything a full step down.
If I need FCGDAE, I simply capo at the second fret.
But I'm quite enjoying EbBbFCGD. It gives me more range than a guitar in standard tuning and more range than my Fender electric mandolin. It's actually got the widest range of any 6-string guitar I know of.
I found both these on Craigslist very cheap. They come from the factory setup very poorly, and are sold primarily as kids instruments, so the prices are reflective. But a few dollars in off-the-shelf upgrades and a bit of time spent doing the necessary adjustments and they truly shine as super-cool 6-stringers tuned completely in 5ths without any reentrants. In fact, the strings and tuning I'm using are perfectly matched to the scale.
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