I guess you have to own many sticks to get into the different gauges...

I think it's rather a question about finding out what tuning and guage resonates best with your particular instrument in the musical situation you tend to use it. Physical factors as material and scale matter but also what music you play; what ensemble situation your strings are supposed to blend with. One aspect is whether you play mostly chords or melody/bass lines.

That's one thing I always wonder from threads like this. Just how many Sticks does Greg own for example. It seems like he is re-stringing for a new tuning pretty frequently, but a lot of these threads are actually months apart.

I know if I was buying one today I would have trouble deciding between the 10, 12 Grand and an Alto. I can't go w/the classic Gearslutz answer of "Buy them all!" as I have yet to win the lottery Which Stick, which tuning, which string gauge. Do I spring for MIDI, do I get a Stepabout, is there a holy grail amp for this instrument, etc. So many questions.

Of course you get the StepABout

I currently only own 3 Sticks, one of which is a Grand that I use for tuning experiments. I haven't tried all the possible tunings, but I've messed around with several, both crossed and uncrossed, various combinations of 4ths and 5ths, parallel and mirrored.

Emmett's design makes it easy to experiment, but if you're playing a lot, you'll probably not want to do this too much on your main axe as it's good to have time to let things settle in before moving on to the next brilliant idea!

I applaud your self-pimping sir



That's cool. I doubt many of my ideas would fall in the category of brilliant. Sometimes interesting if I'm lucky, but probably just enough to irritate my wife. My kids would think it was cool tho

.............But with Stickist.com your questions will be answered........


It took me months to decide which stick and tuning would be good for me. I wanted dual mirrored deep bass tuning in decending 5ths so I can have the same 6 string bass setup on each side (so I can drum on the strings ) and SE is making it for me.

If I messed up and made something that does not work well ?? I will just order a new set of strings. (a small price to pay for a mistake)