What kind of guitar pedal for SY-like tunings?
 

Hi there,

And please forgive me if this is not the right section of the forum to post this.

I've started playing SY tunes on my electric guitar recently, and you know what it's like, I spend fifteen minutes tuning it in F# F# F# F# E B just to realize I will need another 15 minutes to tune it differently to play another song. :(

So my question is: is there some kind of pedal that would allow me to preset the tunings (each string separately) to switch easily from "Saucer-like" tuning to Stereo Sanctity?

I know that might sound crazy/naive, but you know what? I just own ONE guitar!;)

Cheers,

I guess I'm not sure what you're asking. You want a pedal to "tune" the guitar for you? You could always get a pitchshifting pedal, perhaps, though that's just going to raise the tuning an octave or 2, or lower it an octave it 2.

I mean, that's why SY has so many guitars on tour! If they had to tune a guitar separately for each song, half the set would be tuning.

I guess they do have super expensive self-tuning guitars out there, that you can "set" a tuning for and it will tune it to that for you -- look 'em up on youtube.. but, eh, it shouldn't take you 15 minutes to tune to F# F# F# F# E B if you have a tuner that shows the note you're playing.

Yeah, "15 minutes" is a figure of speech:). I do have a tuner.

But that's my problem: a pitch-shifting pedal would only raise the tuning of all the strings.

Is there some kind of string by string tuner?
I mean, changing the pitch of each string without actually (manually) tuning up or down each string.

Well... your only solution would be buying a Gibson Les Paul Robot or and SG Robot. It's the only kind of guitar that does tuning automatically (i think). You can make custom tunings, although i don't know how it would behave with extreme tunings like the one atsonicpark said. check better
This is not a very good solution. it's very expensive, and it may not be your taste in guitars and is definitely not a sonic youth guitar.
also not what your looking for, but still fun... TC Electronic PolyTune Pedal

It's kinda strange that by 2010 guitars can't still tune themselves. Also... wouldn't be cool to make a "midi tremolo arm/whammy bar". as you do your kevin shield playing, it would transfer the x,y,z data to your computer. then you could use that data as expression data to apply effects. maybe in a more ambient guitar playing kinda setting. i don't know if im making any sense...

The wonder sonic youth tab site lists by tuning so you can let the tunings dictate the songs you play.
I have the same problem and am gonna buy another cheap guitar to cut down the hassle!

put banjo mechanics in it. so you have two tunings per string with the glimpse of an eye.
fender builded one of those to the high E string in a custom strat, cause it was build for a musical direction where they often detune the high e while playing.
I imagine that must be possible for all six strings. its easy as switching the light on/off

you would need a midi guitar to be able to do smthing like that I'd have thought.

Yep... the only way to do it is through midi.
There are a few guitars out there that will tune themselves too but I doubt they would work for this application.
http://www.gibson.com/RobotGuitar/

Wow, crazy that this question is getting closer to being answered in 2010. The polytune is major step forward for people looking to tune like SY does.

I once saw Jeff Martin, of the Tea Party, and he explained how had a protype Gibson that could alternate tune during gigs. So you could go from Open G to Drop D with the press of the button. It was worth about 10,000 at the time.

The Variax by Line 6 technology is getting close. Where they emulate acoutsic and 12 string sounds with the turn of the knob. They also can do electric and even a satir.

A pitchshifting pedal wouldn't work, IMHO. If you have a Boss Tu-2 or Tu-3 then turn in onto Chromatic and it tunes it as it hears it.

Amazing guitar...too bad I'm really not into Les Pauls...

I prefer the mechanic banjo trick. or at least I would give it a try

interesting reading for someone who knows nothing about guitars other than they sound great when making music. My knowledge is that a Fender Stratocaster is a wild man's guitar and a Les Paul is for a Technician of the guitar or at least that's how it seems to me.

I saw a new kind of Capo in Guitarist Magazine called a spider capo. http://www.spidercapo.com/testimonials.html#
It could help you change very quickly between similar tunings such as G G D D D# D# (stereo Sanctity) to G G D D F F (Lees guitar on Mote)
But it looks a bit odd.............

don't bother with tuning... get a screwdriver and a big muff pedal and you can play nearly all of the confusion is sex lp that way.

this belongs in the Sonic Guitar Sub-Forum. Mods please move.

The technology is clearly there for self-tuning guitars but there doesn't seem to be a market for them. Even people who want Gibsons seem really reluctant about the Robot. The market is for things that're harking back to the past, vintage specs, the whole 'relic' thing, while ideas like the Robot are moving in the entirely opposite direction. So long as the majority of guitar buyers want guitars that hark back to the 1950s, things like the Robot or companies like Variax will remain, at best, treated with a degree of suspicion.

Not to offend anyone who wants a quick and easy way to reach altered tunings, but I find the idea of the Robot Guitar kinda insulting. I mean, are we so lazy with our modern conveniences that we can't even tune our guitars anymore?

The Variax just seems like an instrument that imitates others, as opposed to one that has its own voice.

.You don't.

I couldn't agree with you more! i consider myself not a very technical guitarist, been playing the instrument for 10+ years... at first i strictly used standard tuning and just made alot of "no-wave" racket though at this time i was a big sonic youth fan and tried to figure out how they made their guitars sound the way they do, not very long after i found on the internet (beacuse you can find anything and everything on the internets) a tuning chart for guitar and then it struck my like a brick in the head or a light bulb went off and whamo ALTERNATE TUNINGS ARE PRETTY SIMPLE BUT CAN OPEN A NEAR ENDLESS COMBINATION OF COMPLEX AND SIMPLE CONFIGURATIONS!!!

I think if you are somewhat serious at wanting to play the instrument (in a traditional sense and not necessarily just "prepared" guitar) it is pretty important to understand tuning(s) and how to achieve them. and this stuff like the Robot is just being LAZY. surely though the inconvience of having only one instrument and writing in many tunings is crazy (unless we are a band like SY with an army of guitars at our disposal) its fairly easy to find many tunings that are relatively close to each other and simple to alternate between without too much of a struggle.

not sure if its been mentioned but string gauge is just as important in alternate tuning, especially if you are stretching a tuning way beyond standard on any particular string (as they can obviously break under too much tension and be too slack at way under tension).