What About Baritone Guitars¿ [Dan & Mick Show You How To Get Started. Er, And Jam!]

What is a baritone guitar and how might you use it? Let's go! Hey everyone, welcome to That Pedal Show. Dan here. Mick here, hello. Please subscribe and please go to That Pedal Show store and buy merch. That's how we fund this show. Okay, baritone guitars then. We've got four today which we'll go through in a minute but what is a baritone guitar? Yeah, it's a different long scale downtune gorgeous sexiness on wood. It's not a bass, it's not a guitar, it's in between. Yes. It's a baritone and where can you hear it then? Surprisingly in a lot of places. Once you tune into it you'll start really hearing it. Now there's a little bit of confusion here because there's some crossover between normal guitars that are just tuned down and also the Fender Bass 6 which is not the same thing and we'll explain that a little bit in a minute. I want to say it was Dan Electro that did it first. Okay. But if it wasn't please correct me in the comments and from the late 50s and you just hear it on so many things through the 1960s. If you want to hear like the quintessential baritone guitar go and listen to Wichita Liveman by Glen Campbell. It is said he played that on a Fender Bass 6 but the register is correct. Okay. And rather than us go through all the examples, I mean we know Joey Landreth, we know Ariel Posen as modern examples. You can hear that sort of register between bass and between guitar like we say on so many styles of music. Please post your favourite baritone examples in the comments below and the people can get into that and get some listening tips. Yes. Tuning. Tuning. Typically B to B. Yes. Right. Same intervals as a normal guitar as in fourth, fourth, fourth, major third, fourth. Yeah. So if you play any chord that you're used to playing on guitar it will work on a baritone. So you don't have to relearn guitar it's just lower. You can use alternate tunings. Joey Landreth, our friend, would play in like a open E major type tuning but tuned down. What does Mark Latiri, I'm assuming he's just normal. How can we not explain, how can we not mention Mark Latiri for baritone guitar? There you go, whole records full of it. So if I play an E major on this Gibson Les Paul, you should be able to hear this through the regular mics. We don't need to mic them, you should be able to hear it right. Hopefully this guitar is in tune. Dan, what's that going to translate to? It'll be an A. Okay, because B to B, his bottom string is tuned down to B, which is what? A fourth? If I'm going down from that, from E, which is there, it's down a fourth. Okay, so we'll demonstrate a bit more of that later. It's also worth saying you will hear baritones tuned A to A, so another tone lower, and as we mentioned, our friend Joey Landreth, C sharp. Wow! So the other way that a baritone guitar is between a bass and an electric guitar, regular electric guitar, is the scale length and string gauges. Right, now scale length of a typical electric guitar is somewhere between 24 1⁄2 and 25 1⁄2 inches, let's talk in inches to make it easy. Fender Jaguars 24, but generally 24 1⁄2 for a Gibson Les Paul-ish, 24 ¾, 25 1⁄2 for most Fenders, Strats and Teles. Precision bass, 34 inches. Okay, right. You can get short scale basses, Jack Bruce famously used a, anyway, whatever, 30 inch, you can get 30 inch basses commonly. I can hear you going, what are the comments going to say, I'm going to try and get Gizmet. Yeah, but typically precision bass, jazz bass, most modern electric bass guitars 34 inches. Yeah. Baritones typically around 28 inches. Right. So in between. Right. And that leads us onto the guitars we've got today, this is actually a 28 inch scale length, it's a Novo Cirrus J, which you've seen on the show before, Dan did a whole track with it a couple weeks back, and it's a really killer thing. It's an amazing thing. We've got the West Valley Indiana Baritone, this is also 28 inch scale. Right. That one has a roasted pine body, this has a swamp ash body, for interest's sake. We've got, yeah, we've got the Carl Longbottom Guitars Alpine B110, I just wanted to make sure I had the name right. I'm not sure what the body wood is on this, but there's a lovely flaming piece of maple for the neck. Beautiful. Both of those are 28 inch scale length, the last two we looked at, this is 28 and a half. Okay. And I've got one more guitar to surprise you with, Dan. Oh, no way. If you're new to the show, Dan absolutely loves Telecasters, it's his favorite guitar ever in the whole world. So I want to say thanks to my friend Paul Stevenson for lending us this. Paul actually bought this after playing the Novo, and the reason is the Novo, all the other guitars today are quite pricey. This is a Squier, I want to say it's from the Classic Vibe series, maybe, or Vintage Modified, and it's around £400 currently. But that's a... £27 and a half. Okay. So our baritone scale lengths today range from £27 and a half at the shortest to £28 and a half for the Kyle Longbottom. That is so cool. Talk about familiarity. Yeah, yeah. We tuned them all the same B to B and we might get into some different tunings later. Oh man. But probably not. How cool is that? That's amazing. Isn't it cool? Yep, so cool. Great, Nick. Beautiful. Alright, let's get into some sounds then. I think let's start with the sort of cliches. Okay. Actually, it's unfair to say cliches. First off, it's a very rare outing for our Wallace amplifier. I wonder what the settings are? AC 5075 XT-FV Mark II from the mid-60s, a really special amp. Chosen it today because it also functions as a really nice bass amp. And of course, a 2 Rock Joey Landris signature amplifier, which we don't use a huge amount, but it seemed appropriate to do so today. Very much so. So the first sound I want to talk about is kind of, you hear it in a lot of Americana, particularly in the 60s. Right. And it's where the guitar plays a counterpoint, almost like a bass line, but with a bit more melody. Right. So it would typically be a clean sound. Right. And it doesn't have to be a 12 bar. Let's add some tremolo. It has such a drama to it. Like I hear Twin Peaks. Yeah, man. Right. When you got that sound. So cool. But you'll hear that in a lot of Americana music, picking out either the main melody or providing like a bass line, but a rhythmic thing in between the guitar and the bass. At the other end, Dan, you explored this in your last track. Some weighty beefiness. Yeah. Because of the register right down there, you get awesome, awesome riffs. Do you want to start with that or do you want to try a different guitar? No, I start with this. All right. I'm guessing. We'll start with overdrive and then we'll move to fuzzier things after. Yeah. Yeah, sure. What is it about going? It's like if you think about it, we're talking about, you know, down a fourth. Yeah. Right. We're talking about five extra notes lower than a normal guitar. Just makes you want to do heavy. It's not it's not just that, but it's it is a totally different thing. The way that the chords ring out, the way that the lower harmonics ring out. Yeah. It's wild. That's kind of what I want to talk about next is the relationship between regular chords and harmonics for things that you already know how to play, take on a new life on a baritone guitar. I'll just say that, you know, we go from like light country. I don't know, Willie Nelson to full on post-rock. Yeah. Yeah. I can play that again. So we go from Glen Campbell, right? We're just going to turn two more pedals on and then we get to flaming post-rock madness, right? It's yeah, it's a completely different sound and a very inspiring sound. What we would say generally, if you're going to start exploring some of that, you do need to watch the bottom end. There's a huge amount of bottom end coming through in all of that because the guitar naturally produces it. Right. So it might be that you just want to lean off your base a little bit in the lean on and enjoy the crazy of it. Okay. What I wanted to talk about was playing stuff you already know. I'll swap guitars again, just to keep the guitars moving around, play stuff you already know, but playing it in the new register. And I think my favourite thing, my absolute favourite thing about baritone guitars, the thing that I like most is playing the chords you already know, open chords and just arpeggiating them for this whole new register. Because, you know, what you know as a C major chord in terms of shape and how it all knits together or a D major chord or an E minor chord or an A minor, I'll play all of those in a minute, takes on a whole new life when you treat it to this new register. So without any effects at all, takes on a sombre texture. A negative capo. Yeah, right. Nice. Takes on a sombre texture immediately that if you just add a bit of reverb, I'm going to add a little bit of oomph as well because I just feel like it needs to be a bit louder. So you don't have to learn anything new, which is one thing I really love about it, because the temptation is, you know, yeah. Clearly. Why not? Yeah. Well, I think what's really interesting is that you know those shapes, right? You know the sound, but when you hear it, your brain's going, what's going on? That doesn't... Yeah. But then it sort of unfolds into this new thing and it becomes something completely different than what you think is going to happen, you know, in normal register guitar. Yeah. It turns into this beautiful... I think because of the lower register, there seems to be more space in it. It's not... We're not so far from the mid-range. It's a different thing. Completely different. Yeah. You'll know if you ever take your regular guitar and tune it to E flat, the whole relationship of everything changes. It becomes, you know, I've always said like strats are a different instrument when you even just put them a half step down. Yeah, yeah, right. We've actually got a strat in a minute that we've tuned to this register, so we'll get into that in a minute. And one, I guess, the last thing, I'm going to dial in a sound for Dan. Do you want a different, why don't you try the Cole? Have you played the Cole? I haven't yet, no. As a matter of interest, this has Filtertron style pickups. This one has a Lolla, I forget what they're called, I'll put that in the description. They tend to have not super high output humbuckers. Right. They tend to be, for want of a better phrase, higher fidelity pickups that don't have a huge amount of bass for obvious reasons. Yeah, right, okay. So you've got Filtertron in there, and this is the longest scale at 28 and a half. And also, just to say, two of the guitars we're playing today have got a wound third, so that the string gauges usually run like 13 or 14 to anywhere between 62 and 70. Wow. So you could go 14 to 70, 13 to 62, and anywhere sort of in between. And then the big contentious point is wound third or not wound third. Right. So maybe we can offer some thoughts on that as we go along. All right, so the sound I dial in for Dan is something you might recognise from our friends, something similar of that, and a sort of pastiche of that maybe. Okay. You won't hear Dan playing like that every day. It's cool, isn't it? It's wild. Just to explain what was going on, the Joey Landra Signature 2 Rock has a harmonic tremolo built in, so I turned that on. We went for quite a lot of gain off the Ariel Posen Broadcast. That thing is amazing. Isn't it lovely? Oh, man. So germanium boost on that side, silicon fuzzy thing on that side. They both can get fuzzy if you turn them right up, just beautiful things. And then I turned on a second harmonic trem. Well, going over the top of all of that was a slapback delay, which gives you that kind of in the room thing. And then turned on the Harmonious Monk as the second harmonic tremolo, just to give it all that. Ah, that's freaking wild. Well, not obviously. The delay in this instance is running stereo to both amps. Is the Harmonious Monk hitting both amps? Yes. But the harmonic trem in the Joey Landra 2 Rock is only in the Joey Landra 2 Rock, so you would have got some of that wet-dry movement. It's such a cool sound, isn't it? It's such a cool sound, isn't it, isn't it, isn't it? All right. Before we move on to, we might even try a little jam in a bit, just to show you how a baritone and a guitar can sit together. Yeah, I think that's really interesting. Baritone and bass, baritone and guitar. Where does this sit in relation to the things that we know? Yeah, so we'll do that in a sec. Before we do that, what about if you don't want to buy a baritone guitar? So I think, you know, if you want to have a guitar custom made by Carl, that's going to cost you quite a lot of money. Put the description, the link in the description box. Similarly with the Novo, you know, you'll know that Novos are certainly far from affordable in any sort of normal sense. And Josh at West Valley, Josh's guitars are extremely good value. He is a soul builder, lone one-man builder, and he offers good value in really great guitars. So he's a soul builder. Nevertheless, it's a really serious investment, which is where the Squier comes in at, like, currently around 400 or something. But what if you just want to take your regular strat and tune it down? Now, Dan, you restrung this. I did. So we've got like 13 to 68. Yeah, I think it's 14 to 68. And I want to say a special shout out to a friend of ours, Harrison, who came on an experience one day and he brought in a strat that was essentially that, but he tuned it to opening major tuning. And I was just blown away at how well the strat managed to hold on to some of these frequencies. Now, of course, if you are going to change your regular guitar to a down tune, you don't need to worry too much about tension because the increased string gauge obviously would be higher tension, but because you've got it tuned right down, you don't need to worry about stress on the guitar too much. Certainly if you're down to B, definitely not if you're down to A. But you will need to think about some setup issues. The guitar will need to be re-intonated and you might need to think about having your nut recut if you're going to do it as a sort of permanent change. We haven't done that today, so it might be that this guitar has got a few intonation and nut issues. The great news about lower registers is you can't hear the intonation. Well, as an aside, I play bass in a pub band and I can go a whole bar playing a semitone in the wrong note with my bass tone and nobody notices. Okay, let's see how this goes then. So Dan, if you wouldn't mind, give us some place to be. I'm going to turn the ODR on because it sounds so good. Those pickups sound like they've got a bit more beef to them. Yeah, they do. So that would probably come into its own as you start piling on gain and all of that. This is going to sound a bit clearer, so we'll just carry on. This is all happening in real time. Observation number one, you cannot play this like a regular guitar. I was going to say exactly that. When you get onto that, because it's so different anyway, you don't try. That's right. And I'm trying to play this like a regular Strat, which I play all day, you know, every day. Well, I have done. And you can't do that. No. I would also say, using the same string gauge ish and a short scale like this is flappy, flappy. Yeah. So maintaining good playing intonation is quite hard. It's really hard. It's really hard because your brain, your brain is telling you, oh, for that sound, you need to go here. It's like, no, no. Yeah. Just think mechanically. Yeah. However, it sounds freaking wild. It does sound good. It sounds good. You'd need to take a minute just to get used to it. Obviously, I think that the slightly if you're used to a regular scale, regular tune guitar, the extra scale length, the different the fact that it's a different guitar and the different tension relationship does help your brain say this is something different. This is cool, though. It's very cool. Dan is talking about committing one of the tellies to a permanent down tune. Yeah. Because I'm, I'm loving this. I really am. And just the different headspace it puts you in harmonically, like, you know, this chord, this is a chord that I've been playing forever on a normal guitar. And it's not just that chord down tune. It's a different thing entirely. The way the harmonics develop, the way that the notes in the chord interact, create different harmonics. Just I'm just I'm loving it so much. That's really beautiful, actually. OK, I think what we should do is let's see if we can put it into context a bit, grab a bass, grab a guitar and see if we can figure out. Yeah, man. What we're hearing. Yeah. Awesome. That was weird. Tell you what's really weird, because you're playing the the bottom note, I'm thinking that's E. Yeah, right. So all the times I should be going to be I'm going to E because I'm watching him play. All right. So that's kind of interesting because when Dan's right down there on those notes and I'm right down here on those notes, you've got quite a lot of fighting going on. Yeah. Play something further up the neck. Yeah. Maybe change the feel a bit, but same. OK. Or I don't know, play some different chords, but go to a higher register. OK. And then and I'll stay low. OK. And we'll see how that works. You play something in G. All right. Tempo. Feel. Interesting. Yeah. So I was I was trying to go like, sorry about all the high notes. I'm just that was wicked. Interested in all the register. Right. So instead of playing just the route, the G route down here, try and play up here. Yeah. And you can go for this one. Yeah. Just to see, you know, where it all happens. Kind of interesting, isn't it? Very interesting. Creates a whole different game. All right. Let's try baritone. And regular electric guitar. OK. Yeah, it's it's in a very unique place, doesn't it? I was trying. So what I try, what I tried to do in the baritone was first and foremost to play the chords in that different register. So you heard how the harmonics develop next to some more standard stuff that Dan was playing. I was playing C major shape. That would be G major for Dan. I then tried to play a bit but not like not that kind of lead, more sort of melody led lead. And then also tried to do a bit of the. Yeah. In a Glen Campbell style, just I don't know, just to try and put into context a little bit about what we've learned. That was really fascinating. What are your what your observations then having played all the guitars? So we've had this just feels like a toy now. It does. It feels like a toy. I I love the frequency range. I think there's a perception that the baritone guitars may lack top end. They do not at all. It's pristine and sparkly up there. It's just that they've they just have all this other. Yeah, I've got all that other stuff down the bottom. Yeah. Really, really taken by it. Interesting. Did you have any thoughts on wound or plain third? It's less important because you're not going, you know, all the time, which is which makes a difference because you're doing more chordal stuff. I find the wound G is absolutely fine. Me too. Yeah. Yeah. And I would say almost even preferable over the plain G because you're not if it was a plain G up at 28, that's it's a hell of a plain string, you know, 28 gauge. And because of the nature of what you're playing, exactly what you just said, I don't feel the need to have the wound to have the plain. So, yeah, I didn't I wasn't going, oh, no, it doesn't have a wound third. Yeah. Whereas in this register, I absolutely would be. Yeah. Because you'd be bending all the way up just to try and get up half a semitone. Did you have a favorite guitar? I really like the Carl Longbottom. Yeah. I think those, what are those pickups called? Yeah, the Filter Trons. The Filter Trons. I think the Filter Trons work extremely well in that guitar. It keeps things tight, but it's still top end. I think they're all great. Of course, the Novo, because I'm quite used to that guitar, it's got low output, but the frequency range of that guitar I find really compelling. And the trem is magic. Off the scale. Off the scale. But definitely, I'm definitely going to get butters and see if I can set up butters, because I'm really enjoying that register, even as a second guitar part when recording. Yeah. Just for something different. I'm going to spice things up. It's where you hear the most. It's exactly where you hear the most. I think if you're going to try and take one to a band, you're going to have some fun finding a place to sit. Yeah. And that's all about working out parts. It's all about working out what you're each going to play so that you can all have your own space. But I mean, I know, Dan, you lean on that. You like the heavy, the chuggy. It's where I was led to, first of all, that the chords and the way that the harmonics interact, it just... That's it for me. Yeah, it's just magical. And then we haven't done it today, but if you take that a step further and then you get into open type tunings and start doing that. Yeah. Slide we know from Joey and we know from Ariel and we know from other people is a whole other sonic exploration. But you know, two newbies to baritone playing. Let's stick with standard tuning. Let's just explore the register. I think that was really interesting. Yeah. Fascinating. We hope you find it inspirational in a way, you know, not suggesting you necessarily go out and splurge a whole load of money on a baritone guitar. But if you like the sound, it's an inspiration machine. Completely. Yeah, completely. Yeah. Fascinating. But there you go. Thank you so much for joining us. Please subscribe if you haven't subscribed. Do that. Yes. Massive thank you to anyone that's gone to that pedal show store dot com and grab some merch. It is the main way we fund the show. And there's so much stuff there. We've got, you know, T-shirts and strings and hats and guitar straps and, you know, head to toe, head to toe people. Yeah, we don't do trousers yet. Maybe that's one for the future. Pants, as you call them in the USA. Awesome. We should do pants. Thanks to our exclusive preferred retailers. Anderson's in the UK and also pedal empire in Australia. And if you click the links, click the description box down, you'll see some links there. And if you use those links to buy stuff, we get a little kickback from that and it helps us greatly. Yes. And massive thank you to our patrons on Patreon. Thank you so much for your support. We'll see you on Monday, 5 p.m. GMT for viewers comments and questions where you can tell us about your baritone stories and, you know, and everything we got wrong. Exactly. Thanks, everyone. See you soon. Bye bye. Bye.