Recent adventures that might be interesting to others who follow or find this thread: So I tuned my new Sawtooth to D standard a little while ago and it was clear I was onto something good, but I felt maybe the tension on the D and G (biggest 2 strings) was a little low with the factory D’addario 45-100 bronze strings. I got so interested in strings you’d think the lives of millions depended on my choice. Studied the tension charts and learned as much as the internet could teach me about the relationships between frequency and string length and mass, inharmonicity, metals and alloys, hex and round cores, and finally ordered a set of GHS medium pressure wound 44-106 alloy 52 strings. Now I get why people work themselves up over strings: so much more complex and, in theory anyways, important than I ever imagined.
While waiting for the new strings to be delivered I got familiar with the new tuning and tried it on my other basses and in different contexts. On my main bass I use to play with other musicians in public I have to stay E-standard. I know the basslines to that set of songs so well I play without thinking, I’m using open notes in E-standard and singing, and the switch to D-standard is too hard, messes everything up, not worth it.
On the other hand, the fretless bass I use to play along with streamed music is so much more enjoyable in D-standard. I was very surprised it worked: it’s a short-scale (30.5 inch) Guild acoustic with D’addario bronze 45-100s. No way it could have good tension and sound tuned a whole step down… but it does feel and sound great, better than in E! How!!?? And it makes it possible to play along with any song without any open notes. This is very nice because a lot of old songs I want to play along with are not in standard tuning - a little sharp or flat from song to song. Fretless in D-standard=no problem just jump right in.
The new strings arrived. I made a recording before and after to compare the sound. The pressure wound alloy 52 are even brighter and richer in high frequency harmonics than the bronze, which weren’t yet very old. No change in loudness. Still a little too much finger noise but that’s on me (this guitar amplifies high frequency squeaks and I was hoping the pressure wounds would better mask my poor technique but nope). The fattest string doesn’t fit properly into the nut slot but it actually sounds fine and the higher action isn’t too bad; notes are sharp up there past the twelfth fret, maybe eventually I’ll widen the nut slot but no hurry. Tension very even across the strings, they seem well-suited to D-standard on this guitar. Oddly what I like most about these new strings is how they sparkle. Out of habit I tend to watch my fretting fingers when I’m just messing around alone, entertaining myself. These strings look like they are coated with diamond dust.
Now the adventure gets weird. So I’ve got my new strings on, I’m playing around alone, listening deeply to all the sounds and I get really sad. It’s the sound coming from my bass: these strings on this guitar in D-standard tuning evoke an overwhelming melancholy. Especially the low D. That note alone, ringing out with all its overtones just made me feel hopeless. When I realized it I thought, hey, that’s pretty neat, would be good for a certain mood but jeez, too heavy for right now. So I tuned up to E-standard just to see. The guitar told me « no » it’s just too tight. Hmm, D-standard too gloomy and E-standard too tense. Is there a happy place in between? I set about looking for the perfect tuning, by ear, and found it. It was incredible, all the notes seemed to resonate and blend perfectly. I felt good and fulfilled making music with this setup. I used a tuning app to figure out where, exactly, I had landed: I was almost in D-standard, but about 20 cents sharp. It corresponded with a tuning of A=444.
Now, I’ve always thought the whole « healing frequency » C528 thing was new-age hogwash and I’m still skeptical, but these strings on this guitar somehow want this A=444 D-standard tuning. It’s an unconventional acoustic, so there are a lot of complex things going on with the dimensions and the wood, and the strings are complex, so how bizarre, right? How unlikely that the string tension that really makes this particular combination of complex variables sing like an angel corresponds to this crazy C528 nonsense?
