Hey folks,

I wanted to chime in on a tuning experiment I will be undertaking very shortly. I recently ordered a set of custom strings for my SB8 that are going to help me enter more familiar territory!

Here's a little history...

As a bass player, I really find my "sweet spot" is around 5th fret on a Fender Jazz bass (approx. A1 to Eb3). This gives me a nice and smooth low mid-range that penetrates just enough beyond my supportive role. Furthermore, I always think in terms of this range, so working with my SB8 in my current interior-matched reciprocal tuning has been a little weird for me. This is all accented by my difficulty with the bulk of the low-B string.

I wanted to keep my bass position, but with a spin toward the low mid-range I love. Therefore, my new strings will be tuned just like the interior-DBR strings up a fourth!

Here's how it should look (starting from 1): C G D A / E B F# C#

I'm really excited to see if this will work out for me. I have a hunch that it will, but any advice on changing tunings, DBR, etc. would be fantastic!!!

Best,
~Nicholas "Klaus" G.

It's the tuning I have on my NS/Stick but the bridge is not adapted for it :
- spaces between "melody" strings are too shorts to play like a regular 5 strings bass (with a high C)
- spaces between "bass" strings in inverted 5th are too wides to easily play arpegios like I do on my 10 & 12 Stick.

But it should be great for the SB8. The ultimate tool for a bass player : playing regular 4th Bass and also 2 handed bass on 5th section.

If I could have a reverse NS/Stick bridge from SEI, I could do this!
Emmett, if you're reading this...

Thanks for the tip, Yannick. I will let the community know how they work out once I get them (super excited!!!).

Hi Nicholas,

I'm a little confused about your current tuning. Is it regular DMR or interior Matched Reciprocal? That would have a lot of bearing on the setup changes you would need to make.

To paraphrase something I believe Rob said, Low E is good enough for Geddy Lee!.

But... (and there's always a but...) why not use Low D? this would have the benefit of putting the E on the inlay marker, and create more opportunities to work around it (unless you have a the bass pattern inlays, then having it at the X fret makes the most sense for what you are used to seeing on your bass).

Hi Greg,

I am in interior matched reciprocal. I meant the bulk of the low-C string!

I rarely ever use open strings on my bass guitar, so I speculate that the new tuning with the low notes on the x-fret will be just fine!

~Nicholas "Klaus" G.

Here's how I would suggest you proceed when changing over.

First change strings 5-8. They will all need to be slightly shorter scale length (so move the slide blocks closer to the frets, but maybe not as much as the adjacent string, so the position for the E will be close to the old F# of string 6, and the bridge height just slightly lower. Before fine-tuning a similar pattern will follow across 6,7, and 8.

For the old "melody side" all the strings will be lengthened, and bridge heights raised. 4 will be longer than the new 6, and 7 slightly shorter. 1 and 8 will be a pretty close match.

For the adjustable nut, both sides will need to come down, 1-4 quite a bit, 5-8 only a little.

As always, make sure your truss is adjusted so that the instrument is straight before changing bridge and nut settings.

You'll also want to lower the pickups for 1-4 and perhaps raise them for 5-8.

Hope that helps and have fun!