Workable 1/2 scale tuning?

[swazi]

G'day..

I bought my son a little half scale strat-shaped guitar off ebay for Xmas. To tell the truth, it's pretty much a piece of crap, mostly because the bridge saddles wobble all over the place, but it should keep him amused for a while.

I was wondering if anyone's come across a decent open tuning for little guitars? I use Open G on my own guitar, but the lower strings just flap about all over the place on the shorter scale - they just refuse to get into tune. It will more or less stay in standard tuning, but the boy's only 4 and I'm not up to trying to teach him proper chords n' stuff...


any ideas?


and yeah, I know this question isn't really an EB issue, but it is string related and I haven't found a more suitable, more general guitar forum to post it in. Feel free to point me in the right direction if you know of such a place... )


cheers,
swazi

 

[AnthonyD]

Hey Swazi - first start with a set of EB strings, of course... The heavier the better in this case.

I had my son working with a 3/4 size guitar for a while and simply tuned the entire thing up one step with heavier strings (12's I think) to get a bit more tension. That seemed to help. You may find you need 1½ to 2 steps with a half-scale guitar.