Make Your Guitar a Baritone in 5 Easy Steps

[@mark.guitar]

If you aren't a luthier with expensive nut files (I am but I still use this method for some guages of string) nut slots can be widened using an offcut of a guitar string and a small piece of 600 grit (or finer) wet and dry paper. Just fold the paper round the string to make an appropriately narrow, round edged, file. Gently file it into the slot to widen it. Be very careful with the angle you file at, using the same angle that the string makes from the nut to the tuning peg to avoid making a baritone sitar... Nice video Bill, a cost effective way of trying out baritone!

[@mixc8]

@Bill I did just what you said on a Kramer Assault guitar and stuck 12's on it. Came out great! I do have another Baritone guitar (Steinberger Synapse with the built on capo which is one of my favorite guitars) By converting the Kramer it gives me a different look and feel plus saves me a few bucks from buying another Baritone. Which I am going to do anyway :) LOL

[@rafaveggi]

I just cut a piece of the string and fit it in my scroll handsaw. If the nut material is too hard you can roughen the string surface with coarse sandpaper. It takes a while to dig in the grooves, but it's very accurate.

[@mark.guitar]

@@rafaveggi That's a good shout. I wish I'd thought of that when forced to do an emergency superglue nut repair in a field in the middle of nowhere. The B string was a "bit high" as the break was at the string slot.

[@mark.guitar]

@@mixc8 I had an old "cricket bat" for a while. Pain to set up the trem but played great when you spent the time on it. Currently halfway through a baritone build. Solid Indian Laurel through neck, bookmatched flamed maple fingerboard, Spalted, flamed Walnut wings. P-rails pups. I'm a luthier and I've been saving up these bits for a while now...

[@fullscanproductions]

@mark.guitar Excellent description of what I just did to an electric & acoustic to get down to C standard tuning. I'm copying/pasting it into my reference material.

[@davelanciani-dimaensionx]

For my "baritone" needs, I usually buy a 7-string set and just put on the lowest 6 strings. I end up with a spare E String that I put aside for my other guitars in E Standard tuning. I recently tuned a Les Paul scale guitar to AEAEAE. That was a lot of fun. The lowest string was a 56, so tuning it down to the low A was a little "wobbly", but it worked! That was for my "Stanzas of Dzyan" album I recorded last year.

[@edwardanderson3506]

Haven't visited the channel in a while. I've missed it. You are the Bob Ross of the guitar world on KZbin!

[@jfo3000]

Used to tune to Drop C on 24.75" scale guitars. Totally doable. 6th string saddle was waaay back! Had to drill out the hole(s) in the 6th string tuner(s) as well. I had a very thick string on there. Always did this on Floyd guitars, so the nut easily accommodated the thicker strings.

[@haiio1348]

"It has to work, Robert Fripp did it!" :D

[@1man1guitarletsgo]

I've done something similar, but with some extra alterations that made the guitar even better. Let me explain: It was 1991, and I was playing in a two-guitar duo, with no bass player. My guitar was an Ibanez RS225 Roadstar model, 25.5" scale length, with two humbuckers. First, I carried out the changes outlined in this video, by getting a set of 9-42 strings, putting the top E to one side, and fitting the five remaining strings, starting with the B string in the vacant E string slot. I fitted a thicker string in the bottom E slot (probably 0.052"). Tuning from B to B and adjusting the guitar setup, that worked well. As for the extra work: I altered the wiring so the neck pickup went via the tone pot (converted to volume), then out to a jack socket that I taped to the guitar. The bridge pickup went out as normal, but now had no tone control, but that was not a problem. Then, going back to the neck pickup, I removed the polepiece screws for the three thinnest strings and put them to one side. I wound the pickup low into the body, and wound the remaining polepiece screws out near the strings. So, my bridge pickup worked as normal, but my neck pickup focused only on the thicker strings. I used two cables: one to a guitar amp, the other to a bass amp. Now, by playing alternating bass with my thumb, I had a fairly convincing bass and rhythm setup. With the other guy playing in standard tuning, we covered a wide tonal spectrum. More than once, people asked where the deep bass was coming from. I eventually returned this guitar to standard, and then in an act of stupidity, put it on eBay!

[@garyleek]

Very well done, clear and patient explanation, and great tips, especially the total tension calculator!

[@mondayworship390]

Literally did this the other week Bill, I slapped some Ernie Ball “Mammoth” strings on an old hardtail Stratocaster. Fortunately I’d changed out the nut when I got it as it was broken and the new nut just about accommodates the strings…. yep even the .62! Intonation ended up having to be a happy “thereabouts” compromise as I ran out of adjustment. I wanted to be in B standard. It’s a fun little experiment, but I did then end up buying a cheap baritone electric too. I love my baritone acoustic and lay down a loop and then swap out to the electric to solo over. My acoustic rig has the Fender Smolder pedal which seems to play nice with electric guitar as well as acoustic. Needless to say, having lots of fun!

[@Emily_M81]

Doing the Lord's work. Thanks for sharing! As much as I love baritone scale lengths, bands were using baritone tunings on standard 6-strings back before we had all these baritone scale guitars. And lol, yes :D12s is what my band's guitarist used for 'B standard' XD. While I appreciate baritone scales for lower tunings, there's a certain tonality when using shorter scale lengths. This video should be on anyone's watch list if they want to downtune, imo. I have two 7-string baritones which are basically my happy place when it comes to guitars. I do have a 25.5" 6-string that I've tuned to Drop C and I didn't run into nut, intonation, or really any issues with it when I changed it all up. It also has a piezo bridge so that deeper tuning sounds so rich and nice in that mode.

[@shoobsean]

You are a fantastic communicator! Thanks for this cool and helpful info.

[@Santaheckler]

If you go to a luthier or feel that the nut can be addressed yourself, I suggest making or having new nut made for the baritone set up. That way, if you decide to go back to your regular set up (or from time to time go back to the baritone) all you have to do is change the nut with the strings.

[@BoydTX]

I did something similar, but in the opposite direction. My band had two bassists and no electric guitarist, so I took one of my basses (they're all 5-strings) and strung it with the top 5 strings from a 6-string bass set, making it E-C. It worked well for a while, but I eventually bought an electric guitar, with which I'm still struggling. But I called that transitional guitar my "alto bass."

[@fullscanproductions]

@BoydTX your comment about 2 bassists in the band reminds me of Spinal Tap's song "Big Bottom'. My first bass was a Fender Bass V (back in 1970) and it came tuned as you mentioned E-C. Alto Bass is a great term!

[@entyzst]

You can also go to B using Tony Iommi method using just regular 10-46 set. He used very light .9-.42 set on C# std on Gibson scale. Makes a lot of things easier to do but I'd not recommend if you pick hard. This approach very much comparable to using .7-.36 set on E tuning

[@BrentAdams]

I did "Tune Down" a 25 1/2" scale guitar and it did have a Trem system (or Vibrato) that was a 2 point S-style vibrato bridge , a basic one, the Wilkinson M Series, and it worked very well! I went with 11-49 gauge strings and also tuned down to "C#-C#" with no problem. That gave me a super low "E-E", sort of like a Bass VI, with the Ibanez SRC6 short scale bass, a regular Baritone tuned "B-B", and the "C#-C#"..... interesting different chord voicings available....and I love having a vibrato on one of them!

[@jamesstonehouse3448]

I have an Epiphone SG Muse set up in C standard or sometimes B flat. I use an 11- 54 set and am really happy with how it plays and sounds.

[@roncall204]

I have a 7 string and I’ve found I can do a quick-and-dirty baritone tuning by tuning the G string down to F#. That puts the lower 6 strings in standard B to B baritone tuning.

[@nothanks3146]

I tune my fender telecaster and jazzmaster to c# standard using not even slinky strings . If I wanted to use the jazzmaster whammy I’d have to adjust the tension in it instead I just took the whammy bar off . No issues been playing them this way for years . If I’m covering a song in e standard I either transpose 3 half steps up or put a capo on the third fret ez . I love the darker lower sounds for recording

[@thejontao]

String tension calculators changed my life! They are particularly good for all the weird custom experimental tunings I like to mess around with. The simplest, for me anyway, is String Joy strings. They sell custom packs of their strings online AND have a string tension calculator. Also… you can stick to standard tuning and experiment with different tensions… my “lightest” standard guitar is set up at about 87 lbs of tension. My “heaviest” standard is a bit more than 130 lbs of tension. In regards setting up a standard guitar as a baritone, I personally prefer to increase the tension as the pitch drops well… but that is just my personal taste. Do whatever works for you.

[@FuzzEater]

This is the best set up video I’ve ever seen on KZbin; it cleared up a lot in my mind. Thank you!

[@misterbeetwit8786]

Did this to one of my strats and got it all the way down to b using 12 s , although c works better as that low strings gets pretty floppy. Sounds pretty good for ambient.

[@Szatynista]

A very important consideration at the end of the video. I, myself, have butchered the nuts on the two of my guitars with the improper filing (those are additionally Buzz Feiten systems to make it worse). I have learned the hard way that you need both skill and proper tools to do that.

[@LauraSquirrel]

This is why I just take it to a local shop and have them do it. I bought the strings from Sweetwater. I brought those along to the shop and found one that I liked and was in my price range. At the end of the day, I got a discount of around 300 to 400 dollars on the guitar and the set up was free. I brought it home once they were done. It played like butter and sounded amazing.

[@picksalot1]

If you have a "good" Modeler, or Pitch Shifting Pedal, you can use your regular guitar and dial in the interval to transpose the pitch of your strings to without making any modifications to your guitar. Depending on how good the Pitch Shifter is, you may have some incorrect pitch transpositions while you play, but newer Modelers are getting surprisingly good at "tracking" the correct pitch. I did temporarily convert and Acoustic Guitar into a Baritone, and it sounded good. But, the neck could not handle the extra tension of the strings that sounded good, so I switched it back to standard pitch.

[@GuillermoCarrasco]

Very useful video. Thanks !

[@giann7020]

Thank you for this lovely and useful guide. Imho, you might run into 2 fundamental issues though: 1) The nut groove width issue indeed, which you eloquently covered , and 2) The most critical of all as far as I know: THE SPACE BETWEEN THE FRETS, due to the scale length discrepancy for thicker strings. In other words, a 25,5" scale VS 27"-30" scale fretboards have each their own distribution of frets, space-wise. The space between frets is LONGER on baritone and bass guitars for a reason, basically to accommodate the string thickness and their corresponding vibration. Therefore, adjusting the intonation and height at the bridge on a 25,5" scale guitar or lower, is probably not gonna cut it to steadily play in tune in. You could even try to move back the whole bridge, in order to match the baritone scale length, but you would still have the space-between-frets challenge, making it still almost impossible to play in tune steadily, even at Drop C# tuning, unless...you also redo the fret´s position on the fingerboard...but I guess that´s a whole different story lol. Cheers. PS: I did try this conversion once on a Fernandes superstrat to tune it in the usual Drop B tuning, but it did not work in the end, later on I realized it was due to these very same reasons.

[@billyscrapper]

been running 13's on some of my acoustics for years... tune down 1/2 step, then go to DADGAD.. also put hi string set on one of my electrics, dropped it down, then tuned to DADGAD, which made my B string a G. so I put an 8 gauge there and ended up with 5 octaves on my hi strung... (only the high E was normal}. then i added a spider capo at the 12th fret to get super octaves on 3 strings.. leaving 3 open for melodies on either side of the spider capo..... my YT video "Occasional Fascination" shows this set up in action if anyone might be interested. great video as always Bill

[@CZPavel-c1p]

very interesting video, thank you Pavel Czech Republic

[@dillonjamesxp]

I have my PRS Mark Holcomb SE set up for drop A# and it sounds beautiful!

[@brushcl]

I do this with my jazzmaster and my tele. The one thing I’m considering though is using a wound G - I find that string in particular sounds a bit odd detuned. I usually tune to B or C, kind of go between the two.

[@chordsoforion]

Agreed on the wound third. The Elixir set that I mention has a wound third and the tone and feel is def better than an unwound.

[@robertdouglas4293]

Cool option! Thanks, something to consider, Thanks!

[@10000rajaram]

Studio is lookin hot Bill !

[@RossD8]

Nice video! Yeah, I tried it with an Italia Modena. No real problems save that the guitar was really heavy. Think I widened the nut slots just a bit. It played great, but was just a too heavy for me.

[@vicentedelhom1]

I tuned my SG in C#, using Ernie Ball Magnum Slinky (12-56) with wound 3 string. Sounds perfect but my luthier had to struggle with intonation. I think it was because of the scale lenght, that is shorter in this type of guitars. I didn't try to force it to B standard, but Drop B works pretty good. I think I'd love to try B standard in a Telecaster with Mammouth Slinky strings. Could be pretty cool. I have a Danelectro 56 Baritone for lower stuff, anyway. But I use to tune it in just B standard for my kind of songwriter project. If you don't like long necks or you're not comfortable with it, try to convert a shorter scale guitar. Mine is around 30 in and you can notice that is really large, what can be difficult to play.

[@muhammadrezahaghiri]

Thanks for the tips. I will give it a shot.

[@samseitz9937]

Bought a squire paranormal baritone last month and it is absolutely amazing. Prior to that my solution was using pitch shifters and a pair of headphones. A little janky but worked ok

[@chordsoforion]

Nice - glad the Paranormal is working out!

[@limerot]

I have done this to a hollowbody 25.5" guitar. Normaly play in open E tuning, and this guitar is tuned to open C# tuning. Use single strings to make a custom set to get the right feel. Nut slots, trussrod and other small things done to the guitar, too. If you plan to make a baritone of a standard scale guitar, a full setup for the pitch and new strings are mandatory in my opinion. I had longer scale baritone guitars in the past, but do not like the longer necks. Now, this guitar is my "comfy" guitar - played all the time.

[@savoirfaire8979]

That beautiful guitar!

[@Akapickles]

Been thinking about doing this to my ES-135. Possibly with flat wound strings.

[@davidsummerville351]

Great info, thanks. 😎🤓

[@Boring_user_name]

Your videos are always amazing ❤

[@adammichaelchannel]

I tuned a Jackson JS Kelly to Drop B. They came with 9s. The highest gauge I could fit through the tuners were 12s.

[@jfo3000]

I've enlarged the hole in the 6th string tuner to accept a 0.060 string. You gotta do that sometimes.

[@rickbug9504]

Does this string tension calculator also work for steel guitar strings?

[@MrSmotPoker1]

The 13s on my JM Contempo allow me to play at Drop B with no issues

[@PetersPlaceToBe]

Wow, keep up the great work!! 🤍

[@moogoomoogoo5990]

Very helpful

[@silvansky]

Well, I tried to put 13-56 strings on 25.5 inch neck and tune to baritone (B-standard). I felt tension is too low, now I checked on calc, 6th string is way too lose compared to 9-42. =) Next time I should try to find 13-64 set of strings to try it again. And change my guitar pickups because they are too muddy for low notes. =)

[@LauraSquirrel]

I did this with a Charvel tuned to A Standard. But, I had one of the local shops set it up. I used a set of Daddario baritone strings.

[@chordsoforion]

Nice!!!

[@tbdaemon]

I've dropped standard guitars to like A but mostly in B and C. The only issues I ran into were from string height

[@oddshot60]

I'm not a shredder. I've wanted a baritone to do some Glen Campbell "Galveston" or "Lineman" licks, some Eagles stuff, and maybe some Pete Anderson/Dwight Yoakam tunes. I have a cheap Strat clone with a real good 25 inch neck that isn't doing anything. Replacing the bridge is easy. I was already thinking of changing out the cheap pickups and switches to alnicov's anyway. Do you think this could be a good build for me?

[@marcoruorio5846]

Even with very heavy strngs my gibson scale guitar doesn't tune well in C, the tuners of a regular guitar do not allow the lower strings to tune properly, a small movement means a lot of pitch change...I keep mine in D with a wound G, needed some intonation adjustments but tunes fine now...

[@brokenhead6018]

Hey, Bill! What do you think about "New Standart" tuning? Have you tried it?

[@damianrjames]

very good. is csharp bariton tho? i'd use and unwound .20 for the G string,,, would you use 13s for B or maybe 14s?

[@novafusionzero8730]

The only thing i would do is opt for dr. strings, as i have found that elixir strings have a tendency to make a perfectly set up guitar have bad fret buzz. Im not saying they are bad by any means but my preference is to use something other than Elixir but not D'Addario maybe Ernie Ball.

[@emilianourrutia2182]

Dear master Bill Thanks for the tips!!... Question: ... Does it only works ( all issues : the link to convert strig tension, the octave fine tuning of strings etc )for my electric guitar?? I was thinking maybe to start with my electro acoustic or the acoustic one.. Thanks!!! Relly a fan of all topics of Orion channel Cheers!! Emil 60y from Stgo Chile

[@chordsoforion]

Yes - the string tension calculator can also be used for acoustic and acoustic-electric guitars.

[@OFFICIAL_FORSAKEN_TENDENCIES]

this is only a question but when you talk about string gauges, if you prefer the THICC strings like 12 gauge couldn't you just put 7 string guitar strings from B,E,A,D,G,b and just tighten the saddles all the way or would that cause issues on its own?

[@chordsoforion]

I would still use a string tension calculator to see what the thicker strings from a 7-string set would do to ensure the tension is in the safe range. And yes, you would want to adjust the bridge to suit the thicker strings.

[@TheGotoGeek]

Pat Metheny plays a lot of baritone, and tunes the middle two strings up am octave. He says to think of the baritone as a small orchestra, with the top strings being a viola, followed by a violin and a cello. And the viola is in charge and really bossy.

[@ToneDeth.]

i just go down to c# and keep the 8s or 9s on. worked for tony iommi. 🤔

[@jfo3000]

Can get that crazy Iommi vibrato that way. I've got a 24.75" at C standard with 0.010s. It's a blast!

[@GillamtheGreatest]

i was flirting with doing a conversion neck just to have a baritone handy, but this is a way cheaper way to get essentially the same thing

[@JMal883]

Thanks for this Bill, I didn’t know this was possible. You have saved me a lot of money, and possibly cured my GAS for a baritone!

[@PickcutStudios]

I have a video on my CH when i converted a 34" Scale Length 4 string bass to a Bass VI. for anybody interested

[@Sheldyck]

I tend to buy D'addario 7 string sets, and not use the thinnest string.

[@Ottophil]

That was me in 2005

[@ibalrog]

One day, I tried tuning my 24" scale parlor guitar down to B. The stock 13-54 or so strings actually felt a lot more reasonable than I expected, and intonation wasn't... awful. One day I'll see about getting a tech to cut a saddle for that guitar and that tuning. I've never been able to find or work out the math to see how far different combinations of strings and tunings could take that little acoustic before the intonation was unusable.

[@rockshelter]

Yeah I did, and it sounded lovely in my ears....And it made the bass player in my band sulky. Told me I was moving into his territory. So no more of that 😅

[@jme214]

Well you need stay in your lane pal

[@jeffallen3382]

Why use a baritone guitar for ambient music? What makes it beneficial for this?

[@chordsoforion]

Because they can sound amazing. :-) It all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. Baritones excel at solo ambient guitar as you can play chord voicings that get into both the bass and guitar range at the same time. For more information, click on the playlist that pops up at the end of this video. Thanks!

[@jeffallen3382]

@@chordsoforion as soon as I hit send I kinda had answered that question to myself. I figured it had to do with the lower bass notes. Thanks.

[@TheJohnandonly]

😙

[@christopherrusch]

so i don’t technically need to buy baritone strings to make my guitar a baritone?

[@mvyper]

I just put a set of 52 12s in my 25.5 guitar and tuned her to C standard. No hustle whatsoever.

[@mainsblanches8793]

A compromise of course, because a baritone is tuned down to B or A!...