Recently, on General Mandolin Discussions, I posted "Seeking Advice on Different Instrument Types" and got the following suggestion:
That got me thinking. I actually have a Baby Taylor guitar that I hardly ever use, and it has a scale length of 22.75" -- almost the same as that of a 23" tenor guitar.Capt. E:
Find a Tenor guitar. The single strings are easier on the fingers... Tenor guitars are normally tuned a fifth lower than a mandolin/violin as is a mandola.
So today I played around with the tuning...
6 E: I dropped it down to a low C
5 A: dropped to G
4 D: no change: D
3 G: raised to A
2 B: dropped to A
1 E: no change: E
Obviously, this gives me two As, which isn't ideal, but I enjoyed playing the guitar tuned in 5ths, and I really liked having a low C. So it made we want to improve on the situation.
First, if I were to convert the guitar to 5 strings by eliminating the extra A (string #2) and moving the E string over to the #2 position, I wonder -- could that put enough uneven stress on the instrument to cause damage?
(There's a reason I like the 5-string idea -- the two outside strings on the Baby Taylor are extremely close to the edge of the fingerboard, and when I play melodies on the high E string, that string can occasionally slip off the fingerboard. So some extra fingerboard space for the top string would be nice.)
Then for the bottom string... The low E dropped to a C is flabby and it sounds bad. Right now, the Taylor is strung with Elixir Ultra-Thing Nanoweb 80/20 Bronze Light strings (.012 - .053), which is what Taylor recommends.
What gauge string should I use for a low C on a short guitar?
PS: I've hunted online for string tension specs for the short-scale Baby Taylor, but I haven't yet found any. However, I read that a standard scale metal-string guitar with light strings has 26.0 lbs of tension for the low E, and total guitar string tension of 163.2 lbs. Presumably, the tension on the Baby Taylor would be somewhat less???
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