A: Have you ever heard Eliot Fisk's various transcriptions of Scarlatti harpsichord pieces? It's completely terrifying, on top of his work with Bach, Vivaldi & Paganini violin stuff. He's one of the very few people I just BUY whatever he records and it's always worthy.
Eliot Fisk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (His home site is down right now.)
B: Have you ever run across the tuning that Robert Fripp calls the "New Standard Guitar Tuning?" I'm sure he didn't
invent it - it's just fifths instead of fourths - but he teaches all his Guitar Craft classes in it:
C G D A E G, low to high.
The high string should be a B to remain all perfect fifths, but you can't get a string to do that. I kept a guitar around tuned that way for a few years (56-40-26-14-10-9), but I just couldn't get to it regularly enough to do anything but screw up my regular practice. It's also called an "octo-mandolin" tuning. Someday, somewhere, some long-fingered kid is going to jump on that tuning and blow some minds.