do you guys have another guitar setup for eb tuning?

[notesfromhell]

With floyd rose equipped guitars, you pretty much have to have a new setup to have it playing it eb, right? Plus you have to have a thicker string gauge to compensate for the lowered tuning right?
A lot of the 80's bands I like tuned to eb

[nateb]

Correct. You must adjust for your floyd and neck tension. About the strings, You can get away with it depending on your string gauge, Eb with 9-42's feels like you are playing with spaghetti but 9-46's isn't so bad.

[charvel750]

The singers in my band have different ranges, and different songs call for different keys sometimes, so we have a standard A = 440 tuning and an Eb (339) tuning for our shows. That obviously requires 2 guitars, and yes, Floyds for sure. 9-42 in Eb is about as low as you can go before getting too slinky.

[MetalHeadMat]

I actually prefer flat tunings because of the string tension. I'd buy half gauges just so I can put them on my "Standard tuning" guitars!

Usually when I go in flat tunings I do have thicker low strings. Ie. If I'm in D I'll use 11-49 gauge, but in Db I'll use 11-52 gauge.

[Genebaby]

Even without a Floyd I would setup two guitars for E and Eb just for the difference in tension on the neck and the effect on the action.

I bought a Pro Mod last week because I didn't want to mess with the great set ups on my many E tuned guitars, so this one will be in Eb from the get go!

[BenoA]

Correct. You must adjust for your floyd and neck tension. About the strings, You can get away with it depending on your string gauge, Eb with 9-42's feels like you are playing with spaghetti but 9-46's isn't so bad.

+1

I'm using 10-46 for Eb on my guitars. 9-42 for E tuning.

This thing about various tunings brought my guitar collection around a dozen in the past few years...

At one point, we had like drop B, drop D, Eb and regular E... Where is the facepalm emoticon when we need it!

[TKEblue]

I don't see how people use 10s or anything smaller. I must have like SRVs fingers or somethin I guess. I use 11s for standard and drop D, then my LP is set up with 12s in drop C. Im sure if I ever played anything lower i would need 13s. Anything else feels like wet spaghetti noodles slopping around. I likes me some tension!

Plus the sound is much fuller with bigger strings imo.

[BenoA]

I don't see how people use 10s or anything smaller. I must have like SRVs fingers or somethin I guess. I use 11s for standard and drop D, then my LP is set up with 12s in drop C. Im sure if I ever played anything lower i would need 13s. Anything else feels like wet spaghetti noodles slopping around. I likes me some tension!

Plus the sound is much fuller with bigger strings imo.

I was using 12s fro Drop C too.

On my shorter scale Godin, I use 11s for Eb.

[javert]

I do use different guitars for different tunings. My band plays both in standard D and E. This is also good for motivating a huge collection of guitars to the wife (and other people who look at me funny when they see my "office")! You need one for each tuning... and then a backup for each tuning as well

[markD]

i have different guitars for different tunings. i have 2 of each - open G, dropped D, Eb, D, then i have my regular arsenal of standard tuning guitars. i play 9-46 on everything. i used to use heavy gauge strings when i was in a surf band, but playing hard rock the 9-46s are fine across the board.

[Michael Scarn]

duh.

[Shawn Lutz]

I use the same string gauge for E and Eb. I set guitars up separately and leave them that way. Change tuning, change guitars.

[BenoA]

I do use different guitars for different tunings... This is also good for motivating a huge collection of guitars to the wife (and other people who look at me funny when they see my "office")! You need one for each tuning... and then a backup for each tuning as well

I'm with Javert!!! Great minds think alike!

[Twitch]

You have to have two period if playing live, FR or not if dropping all the strings down. You cant drop all your strings on stage, its too time consuming, unless your front man likes to chit chat more than sing. My problem is deciding which guitars get which tuning. I usually only change from E to drop D. Even though I have my Floyds blocked, I still lock the strings, but sometimes I want to keep going with one guitar some nights which requires an allen wrench at half time if its my Kelly or Axtra. Im a very indecisive person when it comes to which guitar to play out with. It makes it even harder that I like to show off the herd live, but swapping more than 2 guitars around for a 1 hour set is honestly ridiculous, though Ive done it before.

[BenoA]

We try to make our setlist go with the "guitar changes"... But sometimes you have to adapt to your crowd too.

I've gigged with fixed bridge guitars and this is the best if you only go in drop tuning as it's only a key to twist, something impossible with a Floyd (except if you have D-tuna) but you then loose the pull feature of your Floyd!

I tried the POS Tremol-No. It's too unreliable live.

So these days, we try to manage to have not too many different tunings in the set list. In our case it's Eb and Drop Db. That way, I can live with 3 Floyded guitars... One in Eb, one in Drop Db and a spare one in Eb (most of our tunes are in that tuning).

At the same time, this is good for my guitar addiction!