[bostjan]

FYI - A super heavy string will not intonate because it's too thick. The thicker a string is, the more inharmonic the upper partials are. A super light will not intonate because the tension is too low, and the force needed to fret the notes will throw the fundamental frequency off too much.

IMO - the key is finding a gauge in between these two extremes, somewhere between a .054" and a .068". But it depends on how much you care about tones.

[zimbloth]

Well this argument has been beat to death, but I'll chime in since everyone else is.

I definitely subscribe to the 'lighter the gauge, better the tone' theory. 10 years of experimenting has confirmed this 100% of the time. Gauges in the 60s or 70s sound like bass, and not guitar. Attack, tone and aggressiveness is lost in favor of a more mellow bassier warm sound. The more a string vibrates, the more resonant and "growly" it sounds, which to me is key to tone. I don't really care for murky/mellow/round tone on a low A or B string. That said the stock Ibanez gauges are very light for A, try something in the 56-62 range.

PS: Lighter gauges intonate fine, it's all how it's set up.

[TomAwesome]

^

Thicker strings give you a bigger, rounder kind of tone. That may work very well depending on what you're going for, but to me it starts to take on too may characteristics of a bass and lose too many of the characteristics that make a guitar sound like a guitar. You seem to lose a little of your dynamics to thick strings, too. I use pretty thick strings in my band in which I play rhythm guitar. The sound just works better for what I'm doing in my specific place in the band and blends well with my other guitarist's tone (he has thin strings). In every other situation, though, for all around tone, thinner strings just seem to have more of what makes a guitar sound good.

And yeah, lighter strings can intonate fine.

[Metal Ken]

Originally Posted by JJ Rodriguez

I think his guitars also have a 27" scale, so that 52 probably feels like a 60.

Nope, it only actually adds about a pound of tension. it'd feel like a 54 or a 55...

[TomAwesome]

^ Yup, probably. I think a 52 at A on a 27" scale should feel just like a 52 at A# on a 25.5" scale.

[Metal Ken]

Give or take.

Which is still only 9.5" lbs of tension. which is why i was asking about intonation.

[bostjan]

Originally Posted by TomAwesome

^ Yup, probably. I think a 52 at A on a 27" scale should feel just like a 52 at A# on a 25.5" scale.

Actually, that is exactly correct!

27" is one fret longer than a 25.5". The longer scale has more important advantages than tension, though. The longer the scale, the thicker the gauge you can use without running into bessel harmonics.

[TomAwesome]

Originally Posted by bostjan

27" is one fret longer than a 25.5".

That's what I had thought.

Originally Posted by bostjan

bessel harmonics.

[soldierkahn]

Yup, and I wont dare ever go any thicker than a 60 for A, which is the lowest i tune period, i wont go any lower, just sounds too much like Meshuggah. I actually wish i could try out a 28" scale 7 in A Standard with 11-49+59. Maybe that extra inch will give me the PERFECT amount of tension for those gauges to be tight like i like em.

are there any 28" 7s out there?

[Jongpil Yun]

Tuned B standard, I use a .060. To me, lighter than a .056 in B sounds... sloppy. Well not really sloppy, but too "ksh ksh" sounding, if you get what I mean. Scratchy distortion. It's hard to describe