You never go full Micawber...

[blue]

Anybody done it? I'm not talking about putting a hummer in the neck position on a tele. I'm talking about having a dedicated guitar with the 6th string off and tuned to Open G.

I play mostly in Open G on acoustics (blues, slack key, and general), but I've never even experimented with 5 strings. I have a guitar coming in that will fill my normal tele role with much more versatility than my pine bodied partscaster esquire, so I'm tempted to turn my one pickup beast into a 5 stringer, at least for a while.

If six string Open G is pretty much home base, are there any advantages you can see to going 5? anybody insights from those who have done it would be appreciated.

[Pualee]

After watching a Kieth Richards interview where he shows how he plays 5 string, it occurred to me that you don't lose much in the range of the guitar (just a few half steps).

What you gain is the ability to strum full chords, but leave a little extra musical space. This would be helpful if you are playing rhythm with other musicians - it will not distort quite as easy, and the mids are a little more open (due to 1 less note per strum) for the lead musicians. You can still generally hit your roots 3rds and 5ths without any trouble. You just have fewer of them.

If you play solo, I'm not sure what the value of 5 strings is.

[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by Pualee

...If you play solo, I'm not sure what the value of 5 strings is.

I smell a bad banjo joke coming...

[Pualee]

Originally Posted by Steve DeRosa

I smell a bad banjo joke coming...

How do you know when the stage is level?







































When the banjo player is drooling out of both sides of his mouth

[mr. beaumont]

I've not done it, but it makes perfect sense, for his style.

It's very "grounding" when the lowest string carries the root of your basic chord shapes...

And while you only need five strings to play like Keef...really listen to him. He rarely bashes out a whole five string chord.

[ras1500]

I sort of did it. I loosened the E string enough so that I could remove it from the bridge and nut and let it run along the side of the fretboard. That way it's fairly easy to go back to standard tuning.