baritone guitars for non-doom usage?

[dubkitty]

for the longest time i've been dismissing baritone guitars largely due to the ways i've heard them used, which is mostly in country-pop and surf music. but recently i got into DIIV who are down-tuning a lot nowadays and saw Mogwai who have a guy who plays baritone much of the time, lending their jams a uniquely rich and detailed lower midrange that livens up some little-used parts of the frequency spectrum. so i'm wondering about what's good for non-spaghetti-western use. you know me and my loops, and it seems like that would be right up my street. when i was younger i played guitar in lowered tunings a lot, including my take on Stephen Stills' modal "Bluebird"/"Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" tuning which was C G C G C C so i'm familiar with how that kind of thing feels and works. i saw a demo today of a Gretsch baritone that was nice, though it'd surely need a tremolo added. i'm less excited by Fender baritones, though that purple sparkly Tele or Esquire i saw on here would probably rip especially with some weird British pickups in. i don't like the Fender/Squier Bass VI at all, aesthetically or sonically. so whaddaya got? ideally on the affordable end of things...this is kind of like buying a $100 mandolin because you want to fuck with bluegrass. and to reiterate, this is not going to be used for stoner metal or anything. i prefer TWANG PING to THUD.

Gretsch 5260 Baritone Jet Demo:




holy crap, the embed worked!

[dubkitty]

those are the same pickups they used on the early Pro Jets, which i yanked out of mine in favor of Gretsch/Tokiwa Dynasonics. they were widely derided, by me as well, as lacking in output. but i never did try shimming them up closer to the strings or otherwise fucking with them because i was Dead Set On Dynas. the good thing about Gretsches with this setup is that those routs will happily accomodate P-90s, Filtertrons (with some mount finagling), probably Firebird pickups, and other in-between sizes. but certainly it'd be preferable to have something i didn't have to mod right out of the box.

i note positively that there's a used example of the blue-grey Gretsch with a Bigsby for like $500. i could work with that.

[dubkitty]

i see that Duesenberg has one with the Davoli pickups like my Eastwood Wandré, but it's as far out of my price range as everything else they make. pretty much everything they have on Sweetwater is far too pricey.

poking around, there's a lot of Danelectros which i'm not interested in. i need to look into the cheap builders--Harley Benton, Firefly, Vintage, et al.--and see what they've got. there's a Vintage REVO with toaster pickups which looks good other than the f-holes, which you could play cornhole with during set breaks.

[Zork]

Baritones are so cool. The long scale and thick strings do something very pleasing to the sound. Gretsch had a few versions with a Bigsby already fitted. For other models, I think the Hagstrom Viking Baritone with Bigsby is really sexy but also quite expensive. What about the Squier Paranormal Cabronita Baritone? P90s fit the baritone sound very well imo.

[dubkitty]

so far it seems like the most plausible candidates are Squier and Gretsch. i can't find any decent demos of the Vintage Revo Baritone, only ones with people using it as a 6-string bass. i'll tell you, though, some of the other guitars in that line are nuts. i had no idea they were doing anything other than cheap copies, but hoo boy. the one with 4 pickups is calling my name. it's like a DiPinto you can actually use. but i digress. i guarantee you that if i get one of these things the first thing i'm going to do is play the solo to "Wichita Lineman," which i dearly love. you know, they could have quit making records after this and i'd be OK with it.

[Blackened Soul]

As someone that has always tuned normal guitars baritone… and I’ve had a couple “normal” baritones… personally the ones with the longer scales like the Gretsch which is basically a retuned bassvi (you could just get a bass vi and restring it) gives you a much more pronounced sound from a low tuned guitar.. crisper, stringyer, twangyer, tighter, tons of harmonics. A 27” scale will get you there, and they do sound cool but the are tamer (I also would say they are the ultimate metal guitar) Also about the doom thing… user Bassus Sanguinis used the gretsch one as a bass vi in fuzzifer (blackened-doom-free jazz-noise) and I’ve used a danelectro from doom.. the guitar doesn’t matter as much as gobs of gain
They do stay more defined than a conventional scale guitar though fuzz/distortion.. examples… no idea atm drawing a blank.. but on the bass vi vein.. think anything you like in the realm of bass vi players but you are loosing the lowest string for a extra high string

[Zork]

Bass VI scale for A or B tuning is a bit too much imo and not really necessary. It sounds cool but is slightly less comfortable. I would look for something around 28". Have you considered a conversion neck for a guitar you already own?

[dubkitty]

it did strike me that the Jazzmaster with a conversion neck could be a thing. i think DIIV are playing baritone Jazzmasters. in the same way those Gretsch pickups are more appealing with bigger strings and lower tunings that might be something i could actually use a Jaguar for…every couple of years i try one in the shops just to remind myself that they’re the one classic Fender style that passes me by. i don’t know that the Jag’s shorter scale would lend itself to baritone as well as the 25.5 CVJM.

that’s the only bolt-neck guitar i own that would work, i think. the other Fenders (Strat, Lead II, Duo Sonic) don’t have suitable pickups, and the Hopf, Kondor, and Wandré are too important to my sound palette to fuck with. there’s also the problem of trying to find replacement/conversion necks for anything other than the usual suspects, i.e. it’s basically a Fender retrofit market.

another factor is that though i love my JM, it’s a used Squier i got as a bonus prize when i traded in my Rickenbacker 360 to get a Guild Aristocrat and worked on so it’s not a huge asset to shift. it also has the American Pro Fender tremolo, which is the best i’ve tried firbshoegaze stunts. if i decided i liked the JM as a baritone i could just get another CV or perhaps one of the Vintage Jazz-alikes.

lotta stuff to think about. i really like the sound of the Gretsch in the demo.

[dubkitty]

i just looked on Reverb and Fender sells baritone conversion necks in Strat and Tele formats, the first being an acceptable fit for Jazzmasters. i’m not potty about pau ferro fingerboards, though, especially when they’re as light, streaky, and dry as the examples on Reverb appear to be. they remind me of my Lead II, whose fingerboard drank about a pint of lemon oil before becoming comfortably playable. i bet some boffin on eBay is selling necks with more interesting materials. there are aluminum necks, but i’m not $800 worth of curious and they’d probably be clangier than i want.

[dubkitty]

turns out that only one of the guys in DIIV plays a baritone. Cole must be using weird tunings on standard guitar, but i can't easily find them.

[dubkitty]

seems like now would be a good time to get out the Jazzmaster and try down-tuning it. i think it should handle going down to C, which is low enough to get an idea of how i’d like the idea. apparently B tuning is the happy compromise between C and A, but a half step won’t make a huge difference.

if this seems like a goer, there are sub-$100 Chinese baritone Strat necks all over eBay and i’m sure that’s cheaper than a built baritone, almost all of which are over $1000 new. i have to think there’s a fair number of used ones out there because probably a quarter of the people who start on baritone stick with it, but those might be doomers so the instruments might be too metal for me. not the aesthetics, the pickups/tremolo/bridge.

[Blackened Soul]

there are sub-$100 Chinese baritone Strat necks all over eBay

Just keep in mind this is a crapshoot… I’ve gotten necks like that that were ok over the years but the very last time (last year) I got one where the frets were both crooked and not straight…

[dubkitty]

oh, yeah, totally. as George Harrison once said, you should expect nothing because then whatever you get will be a big bonus. and when it comes to low-price Chinese imports i've already been around the block with Temu and am developing a sense for when things will be OK and when they'll be crap. if i buy a $60 neck and it sucks, i can give it to Becky's sister's enormous dog to use as a toothpick. i just think it's better in the short term to try an inexpensive neck for test purposes...i'd rather do that than buy a $400 Fender conversion neck i'd have to try to sell if things don't work out.

i got out the CVJM and tuned it to C, which is as far as you can go with .010s and still be in some semblance of tune and intonation. when i was doing this on acoustic i used medium acoustic strings which IIRC go like .013-.056 so the notes kept their shape better. i'm already thinking of it as a different instrument to standard guitar; my regular vocabulary won't work pitched that far down. both DIIV and Mogwai use the baritone for held low notes and little rotating figures played fairly high up on the fingerboard, so i'm experimenting with that. the Jazzmaster pickups aren't necessarily what i'd choose for a baritone, but if that wound up as the solution i'd figure out something. a tone switch could help. i suspect that the more toppy the pickups are the better, which eventually might make a baritone Tele sensible.

[Blackened Soul]

I totally get you, I do the same thing. And yeah if I needed a 27-28” scale baritone I’d do the same thing, cheap neck on a jazzmaster, and if I loved it I’d look into a better neck.. maybe… my go to years ago was getting danelectro replacement longhorn necks and dill for two more tuners.. and stick them on a tele or strat body..

[Zork]

You can just use a 7 string set without the high e string or simply use the Ernie Ball Slinky Baritone set on standard scale BUT a longer scale will improve the tone and clarity with such low tunings a lot.