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I use a set of 10 gauge steel strings on my electric guitar and for the past few days I have been thinking of testing out the All Fourths Tuning. I was wondering if this poses a risk of breaking the strings either while tuning or heavy picking (which I tend to do).

I started learning the guitar almost a year ago, and I genuinely see no benefit from the standard tuning. In fact the semitone down tuning on string 2 always tripped me up in the beginning.

P.S. I'm not sure if I should post this in a physics forum. But the question felt like it belonged here.

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  • The way I look at it is that by tuning the first and second string to C and F respectively gives you a bit more variety as to choices in open chords and notes, it makes scales seem a bit more simpler, finding notes on the guitar becomes simpler. Basically I am advocating uniformity. But maybe this is because I am a beginner, I may change my mind later.
    – Michael Thomas
    Apr 29, 2017 at 4:31

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Tightening up the top two by a semitone won't make much difference. You could, of course, go the opposite way, and tune the bottom four down a semitone - making the strings Eb Ab Db Gb B(Cb) E.

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  • Can't really down tune the bass strings. I have a really shoddy guitar with the most glorious fret buzz that competes with the music for dominance. I'm afraid tuning it down would just exacerbate the problem. But I think I'm going to go ahead and tune 1 and 2 up, let's see if there is any noticeable ease in playing.
    – Michael Thomas
    Apr 28, 2017 at 7:32
  • It would work for a lot of guitars - it does work as a lot of players already tune down at least the bottom string, if not all.
    – Tim
    Apr 28, 2017 at 7:33

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