[stubhead]

I have an extra four-string, 35" scale bass around here, and I'm thinking of hooking it up for C G D A low to high. I think the strings I want would be about 0.125" - 0.090" - 0.065" - 0.040", but I'm not sure. Any ideas on gauges, and where to buy them singly?

I sure don't need to start a collection of orphan leftover bass strings, to match my orphan guitar string museum.

[Brendan G]

Is this what you are looking for? Bass Guitar Single Strings

[loneguitarist]

take a look here - very useful info for tuning in 5ths
Entering the 5th Dimension

[stubhead]

I had kept a fifths guitar around for several years, or at least a NSG-tuned C G D A E G. On guitars, if you're chasing pure fifths down from a high 0.009" you will run into the inharmonicity limits, below a .074" just sounds bad, you can even argue that a .066" on a 25.5" scale introduces too many bad harmonics due to the size of the vibrating cylinder, depending on your tastes. A long-scale bass should work fine.

http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/ext...rmonicity.html

http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/sev...auge-sets.html

[angus]

I'd be very wary of using his calculations as some sort of rule- there are a lot of very, very big approximations (uniform young's modulus; geometric properties; and the fundamental assumption made in the entire thing...treating the string as a vibrating cylinder) so it's going to produce very assumptive answers.

I'm really sensitive to intonation, but I have a guitar sitting by me with a .072 Bb on it that isn't inharmonicitous at all, on 25.5". Then I have a bass with a .120 B (very light) that is unplayable above the 5th fret because it's a crappy exposed core string, which often causes inharmonicity that is unimaginably bad to most guitarists!!

Those gauges are ok if you like decently heavy sets. The 0.090 might be the most heavy relative to tuning in that set.

[ixlramp]

Hello stubhead, i've been tuning basses in fifths tunings since 1996.

As a theoretical starting point the ratio of gauges between adjacent strings will be 3:2 for equal tension (same ratio as the frequency ratio of the fifth interval). So theoretically 40 60 90 135 would have equal tension.

However in practice this rule creates a slight rise in tension towards the high strings, i find a slght reduction works better so i would recommend perhaps 35 55 85 135.

Working from high to low strings: multiply gauge by 3/2 and choose the next higher available gauge. Working from low to high strings multiply gauge by 2/3 and choose next lower available gauge. This is my rough rule for a starting point from which trial and error can be used to perfect the set.