I frequent the AGF (Acoustic Guitar Forum) and one of the threads was about high-strung (Nashville) tuning. I heard about this before from various places, but didn’t exact know what it was until now. The posts in the thread said you should use a cheaper, small-bodied guitar when experimenting with this kind of tuning. It also mentioned that most people experiment using a Baby Taylor…..which I just so happen to have lying around (Baby Taylor Rosewood).
Nashville Tuning is basically restringing your guitar with the octave six strings of a 12-string guitar. It makes for a jangly, bright, autoharp, 12-string guitar kind of sound when playing alternately with another guitar.
D’Addario is the brand of strings I like using because with the EXPs, the coating somehow lasts longer than Elixir Nanoweb/Polyweb coating. It just so happens D’Addario also makes a set of strings specifically for this Nashville tuning so I don’t have to buy a whole set of 12-string strings.
Standard 6-string “light” sets usually come in the following gauges:
E, B, G, D, A, E
.012, .016, .024, .032, .042, .053
High-strung Nashville tuning sets come with the following gauges:
E, B, G, D, A, E
.010, .014, .009, .012, .018, .027
Standard 12-string “light” sets usually come in the following gauges:
E, E, B, B, G, G, D, D, A, A, E, E
.010, .010, .014, .014, .023, .008, .030, .012, .039, .018, .047, .027
The experiment was pretty interesting. It’s good to have different tone coming from each of my guitars now and with this tuning, I don’t have to buy a whole new guitar. I also can use the same fingering and chord formations as regular tuning. Using Drop-D tuning with the set of Nashville-tuned strings supposedly is pleasant too.
Maybe I’ll even learn a little Hawaiian slack-key in the future as well.
– Norm
Keeping up with the Moys 