Inverted 5th Tuning

I previously related my efforts to get my $2,500 Takamine fretless acoustic bass somewhat stage-worthy. While I mostly solved the feedback problem, I was running into issues with the "presence" of that bass's noise. Individual notes in the middle register of the instrument were often lost and chords seemed muddy and indistinct.

As a longtime fan of Peter Gabriel and King Crimson bassist Tony Levin, I always enjoyed the sounds he made on the Chapman Stick. Poking around the interwebs I tried to find out how much one of those instruments cost. In the course of that inquiry I learned about Emmitt Chapman's inverted 5th tunings.

In 1964 Chapman wanted to make chordal accompanyment as easy as possible, given the complex jazz progressions he was playing together at the time on the 34" scall 8-string guitar he had built at the time. He found the bass element easier to negotiate if those strings were somewhere in the middle of the sequence. Around '67 he created the bass 5ths tuning on that 8-string guitar by dropping the D at the 6th position down an octave, extending my overall range by a whole step, and raising the E at the 8th position up an octave. The A was left as is, thus all lettered notes remained the same. Soon after, I added a 9th string (B, a 5th above the 8th E).

On a 4-string bass these tunings resulted in reversing the order of the strings, with the heavier gauge low strings toward the bottom rather than the top. And while the letter notes of each string followed the standard pattern of the top 4 strings of a 5-string bass (B-E-A-D), each 5th was actually a full octave apart from string to string.

I was interesting in attempting these tunings, but first I had to find an instrument where I could reverse the normal string gauges, essentially turning a right-handed guitar into a left handed guiter, before I could attempt the inverted 5th tuning.

I did NOT want to experiment first on my expensive Takamine, so I looked to my el cheapo Dean acoustic bass, but the holes to set the string ends were bored different sized to accommodate each string. Then I remembered Omdaughter's Peavey Fury IV bass that had been temporarily residing at our home. The bridge on the Peavey had standard bores for the strings all the same size, but string channels in the nut were different sizes. Ha, so I received permission from Omdaughter to tap out the nut and slip it back in the neck opposite. Thankfully the process was perfect.

Next I strung up the bass with strings and tuned to the inverted 5ths. Now, when compared with standard tunings, a standard set of bass strings in the inverted 5th are tuned (except the A string) are tuned to different notes and tensions than for which they were normally designed. 

Here is the outline of how the strings are tunes differently:

• Standard low E string is tuned down 1 full step to D
• Standard A string is tuned the same to A
• Standard D string is tuned up 1 full step to E
• Standard high G string is tuned up 2 full steps to B

The problem was tuning that high G string up 2 full steps to a high B, the sets of strings I had (La Bella 760 FS Deep Talkin' Bass extra long flatwounds) just weren't designed to handle the tension of being tuned up 2 full steps. (Ha, thankfully La Bella was kind enough to sell me 2 individual G strings to replace the ones I busted so I still had a couple new sets.) What to do?

I knew I wanted flatwound strings, and it turned out D'Addario has a string tension guide for their strings that lists the tensions of various gauge strings at a variety of tunings. The purpose of this is because apparently some players want an even tension across all their strings (I never even thought of that), but the effect was I found a proper gauge flatwound G string in an extra long bass set that had a tension listing for a high B. Eureka!

Below is the guitar now. It is a trip to play as the chordings are super strange and the guitar easily slaps in almost a Les Claypool/Primus style (not that I am remotely near Les!). One thing is I had to swap the location for balance and volume knobs as I kept bumping my vol. Band mates are going with the flow for now, so we'll see where this musical tangent goes. Way to be.