Nashville Tuning Demo







I just got into using some guitars that are Nashville Tuned. The word Nashville is a bit misleading because this tuning has been used extensively on tons of rock. pop and country hits. The guitar is strung up with the usual high E and B strings but the G, D, A and low E strings are tuned an octave higher. It's basically half of a 12 string guitar set. It works well for rhythm guitar on it's own and also when combined with a standard rhythm guitar. In some case lead riffs sound good with this tuning and sometimes just awful. It cuts through the mix in a recording and is a good alternative to using a capo up the neck on a standard guitar or using a mandolin to get a higher and clearer sound on backing tracks.

I ended up with one acoustic and one electric guitar tuned Nashville. The Acoustic guitar is a Wechter NV-5413CE that is made and marketed for this tuning. I bought it used off of Reverb.com for a negotiated $260. An obsolete and somewhat rare model, it also has a built in Fishman amp/EQ and both 1/4" and XLR jacks! The sound and playability of this guitar is just astounding and the only adjustment I had to make was tightening up the truss rod. This particular guitar had a crack repaired near where the neck joins the body. For $260 I think it's a steal! Strings are D'Addario phosphor bronze EJ38H, "High Strung/Nashville Tuning", .010, .014, .009, .012, .018, .027W. You can buy a set of 12 string guitar strings if you want coated strings and just use half of them on a Nashville tuned guitar and half of them on a regular guitar.

The electric guitar is a cheap short scale Squier by Fender Mini Strat - Rosewood Fingerboard - Black. $129 on Amazon and it came with a slightly warped neck and totally unadjusted and unplayable as is. Not sure why but after putting a new set of Nahville strings on it, adjusting the truss rod and intonation, the neck strightened out almost perfect with about .005" of clearance at the 8th fret when fingered at the 1st and 14th frets. The bridge provides tons of adjustment range in intonation for each individual string and that's needed for the very thin lower strings. The strings I used are nickel wound D'Addario XL EXL150H, .010, .014, .009, .012, .018, .025W. You can see this guitar here:

See the guitar on Amazon




A full song recording with real pedal steel, bass, rhythm guitar and EZDrummer drums All pedal steel parts are played into a Boss RV-6 reverb in stereo with Allen Encore and Fender Princeton Reverb re-issue amps mic'd with Shure SM57's.
Click here to listen to The Shortest Steel Guitar Song In The World


Review Summary

From listening to the Nashville tuning demos on other web sites it's obvious that almost any guitar will work well with this tuning as long as the action can be adjusted to handle the altered string gauges. I tried playing a bunch of very ordinary lead riffs and some sound like whole new and exciting creations with this tuning and some just don't sound good at all. You can capo the guitar up a few frets and still retain a great tone. I'd say if you are only going to use it one one guitar, use an acoustic and just record with a decent condenser mic. While some have used this tuning on ultra compact guitars like the Martin Backpacker, I think it sounds better on a more full bodied guitar of at least a 000 body size.





Sound Samples



Here's some sound samples. The acoustic was recorded with a condenser mic to a Studio Projects preamp and then to a Zoom R24. The electric samples used an Allen Encore tube amp TT-12 speaker mic'd with a Shure SM-57.

Selection
Recording Method
 		Comments
Condenser Mic
 Standard Acoustic Left Channel, Nashville Acoustic Right Channel
Condenser Mic
 Nashville Acoustic Only
Allen Encore Amp / SM57
 Nashville Electric - 5 Switch Positions Then Demo
Condenser Mic
 Nashville Acoustic Demo 2
Condenser Mic
 Nashville Acoustic Demo 3
Allen Encore Amp / SM57
 Nashville Electric Demo 2



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