Who's Your DADGAD?

Altered tunings. While that might describe the un-processed vocal tracks of the latest Super Bowl festivities, in guitardom it means changing your tuning from the standard EADGBE to something a bit more exotic. Intrepid acoustic guitar explorers might start by dropping their Low E down to D at first, in order to get some depth in their accompaniment. That can lead to dropping the Hi E to D as well, and thus the drop D gateway drug leads you to DADGAD or the endless variations thereof. My first conscious exposure to altered tunings was trying to play "Kashmir" in standard. In can be done, but not as easily as in DADGAD.

There are a host of guitar players who tune to DADGAD and have made it part of their signature sound doing so, such as Pierre Bensusan and Laurence Juber .



D'Addario strings have always sounded great in alternate tunings, but it took some getting used to the different feel and tension of a slacked string intended for standard tuning. The new EJ24 True Medium set addresses this by using a smaller core wire in the 3rd, 4th and 5th strings.

		Diameter		Tension
Item#	Note	inches	mm	lbs	kg
PL013	E	0.013	0.33	27.4	12.42
PL017	B	0.017	0.43	26.3	11.91
PB024	G	0.024	0.61	30.2	13.38
PB032	D	0.032	0.81	30.5	13.83
PB042	A	0.042	1.07	29.9	13.56
PB056	E	0.056	1.42	29.0	13.15

These strings have an even-feel tension in both standard and DADGAD tunings. String up your acoustic with the EJ 24 set and DADGAD it.