Petrucci 7 in A standard tuning

[Maselbas]

Hi there! I purchased a Petrucci arctic finish seven string tonigh on Reverb.. The band I play with is in A standard tuning. A few people on the music man Petrucci Facebook page say that tuning to A standard is no problem for them. On the forums here I see people do indeed have problems with intonation tuning low. Has anybody had any issues keeping this guitar in tune at A standard? I’m just hoping I will not be regretting my purchase and putting it up for sale on Reverb. Seems a bit ridiculous if a guitar cannot handle a simple full step down. Any suggestions or experience with this? BTW I own a Majesty Monarchy 6 and is the best guitar I’ve ever owned! I hope to hell I have no down tuning issues with the 7 when it arrives. I assume drilling the B string tuner will be a must. Am I going to have to file the nut down on the B? Will filing the nut screw my intonation on the B if I were to go back up to standard? Kinda sweating here hoping I didn’t just spend a crapload of money on a lost cause.

 

[SpeakingToStone]

Man, I'm sorry to say this, but I tried to do the same thing with the same guitar and I could NOT get the intonation right. I settled on drop A, but even that really is a bit of a nightmare. I hope you have better luck than I did.

 

[MesaBeno]

Yea, I've always been pretty surprised JP can get his 7 working so well on a 25.5" scale. I imagine he's basically pushing it to its capability as is when tuned to standard. You'd likely need a longer scale to account for lower tunings without having intonation issues.

 

[dave1812]

I had my JP7 Standard tuned to "A Standard" for a while. I used 10-56 RPS Slinky's
It was somewhat pushing it though, so I got a used OLP Baritone for A Standard.
I wanted to get a JP Baritone, but now they're discontinued and hard to find sadly wish they did a JP Standard Baritone, wouldn't even need the Piezo imho

 

[tbonesullivan]

Whether you will need to do any mods to the tuner or the nut depends entirely on what size strings you will be using.

The guitar is designed to work with the strings at the pitch it was designed to play at. As others have said, 25.5 scale is almost borderline for a low B string.

 

[Maselbas]

I picked up one of those digitech drop tuning pedals. From all the YouTube reviews I’ve seen they seem to work pretty well with little latency and people that own them are happy with them. If a standard is not working I’ll see if switching to that will do the trick.

 

[beej]

The Drop is surprisingly good. My bass player has one- I've recently gave it a go and really liked it. Tracks perfectly.

 

[milnik]

i fully disagree with the people who say that you can't get the intonation right on a 25.5 inch scale in A standard..

I have my majesty monarchy in Drop G and its great. I use 10-58 Gauge strings and it's close to perfect. It might go a bit sharp if I hit the string hard on the high frets. But that's a technique thing...
If you are experienced with setting up your guitars on your own you should have no issues.

EDIT: And don't go and put ultra heavy strings on there. It's not necessary and makes the intonation worse in my experience. Stick with a 56 for a low A and set it up properly