The journey of a thousand taps ...

... begins with a little trip down the rabbit hole of calculating string gauges. The instrument shipped with a first string of .008 in. diameter, which to my ear sounds sadly underpowered versus all the other strings. So I knew that I would want to go up to an .009 (or perhaps even a .010, eventually), but what about all the other strings?

There are multiple resources on the web to help a person calculate proper string gauges, and I tried several. When D'Addario's String Tension Pro calculator works, it works beautifully; the catch is that it doesn't really tolerate backtracking to tweak one or two pieces of information. If you want to change any detail of what you've previously entered, the site requires you to go back to the beginning and enter everything all over again — and for a 10-string instrument, that's incredibly clunky.

So, I created a spreadsheet comparing string diameters and string tension for various sets of strings, including the set already on the instrument, the set offered by Mobius Megatar for Chapman Stick tuning (with the bass in inverted fifths — that is, ascending in perfect fifths from the middle of the neck out to the near edge), and then played around with calculating the gauges that would achieve varying levels of balanced tension across the neck.

Lucky for me, before I placed any order, I found the Stringjoy site. I'd seen (and immediately bypassed) their ads in my Facebook feed, but when I discovered the generous informational videos posted in their blog, I knew I'd found the right people. I sent them an inquiry describing my needs, and within 24 hours their President, Scott Marquart, replied with his recommendations. I was happy to see that I had calculated correctly for all of the plain steel strings and some of the wound guitar strings, and I was relieved that Scott stopped me from ordering wound bass strings that would be too slack for practical use (that is, the bass strings need to be at a slightly higher tension). Those strings are on their way; I'll report back after trying them, though there is some work I will do while the strings are off (see next post).