Quote:
Originally Posted by Dru Edwards
I've played that "guitar" a few times when I visited Russel Crosby. It has an amazing sound. It's tuned in 5ths, correct? With 4 courses? I think we're talking about the same one.
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I know he made a 2nd one (after I bought the first one) that was not quite as deep but yeah it's a 4 course, unison pairs, instrument with a 23" scale, 1.5" nut and a body modeled on a Martin size 0. I also know that it will come with a Hiscox case (because I sold Russel the case). When I first played mine, Russel had it tuned to "standard" tenor guitar tuning (CGDA, the low C is equivalent to the 3rd fret on the 5th (A) string of a guitar), as you said, 5ths (an octave above a viola or a mandocello), but when I went to pick it up he had strung it for "guitar top" tuning, that is DGBE.
It sounded great either way but I wanted something lower so I now keep mine tuned GDGC (same intervals as DADG). It's a fairly minor change in string gauges for GDAD ore GDAE (back to 5ths, this time an octave below a mandolin/violin). I bought myself a set of nut files so I could do my own setups/maintenance and stringing it for the lower tuning was pretty simple.
Phil