Ive got a new trio and we’re talking about busking. I dont play up right or have a battery powered amp or battery power supply. So Im toying with the idea of running a heavier gauge on my dano 6 string guitar -
’57 Guitar | Danelectro Guitars …..not a baritone - tune to B standard, pick and run it through my pignose.
other than just trial and error, does anyone have suggestions on how to figure out what gauges might work for this?
thanks
- Open the Stringjoy tension calculator (not that you have to buy their strings: it's just so you get a rough idea of the tensions involved - other brands and types may have them different, even gauge being equal, but not night-and-day so)
Stringjoy Guitar String Tension Calculator
- input '25' as the overall scale length
- input gauges you usually have on the guitar, in standard tuning (if the case)
- change the number of strings to '7'
- find a gauge for low B that slightly exceeds (more massive strings have more momentum at midpoint - depending on your string action preferences, equal tensions may entail altering the overall setup anyway) that of the low E
- now change gauge to said low E so that its tension is a little over that of the adjacent A
- rinse and repeat (of course, the 'G3' pitch needs to change to an 'F#3')
- after you've used it as reference for the high B tension, ignore the high E string, which will be swapped out in the new tuning, while the remaining 6 will make up the new set
- if you want, you can now
-- adjust the selected gauges, making the set less unbalanced in terms of tension (which it may well be)
-- try speccing a set of gauges one notch heavier (with a tension target in between guitar and short-scale bass typical respective tensions)
- finally, look for a commercial set with similar gauges
- a personal suggestion: guitar flatwounds can be awesome. Take the D'Addario ECG24-7 set (without the high E, of course) into consideration. Or just get
four singles (26w-38-50-65) and add
a pair of plains on top (say, a 015 high B and a 020p for the F#).
