DIMEBAG's God damn tuning.
 

It is still amazing to me that the majority of modern guitarist STILL do not know how Dime tuned his guitars...yet they still try and play his songs.

He always tuned down a 1/4 step...whether he played in E, D, Drop-D, C#, Drop-C, and/or Octave G (on Underground in America and Sandblasted Skin)

an easy way to achieve this (for me at least :D ) is, I use my Pod XT to tune. Simply switch from A440 HZ to A425 HZ. Than tune like so.

For example, if you tune to E at A425 HZ, it is actually E-Flat, plus a quarter. (when you switch back to A440 and compare of course.)

This was a very big part of dime's sound...and unfortunately has been overlooked quite a bit.

Megadeth's 'Peace Sells...' was recorded 1/4 down apparently.

Thanks for the insight in how to do it accurately! Dunno why that never occured to me.

im pretty sure everyone who didnt give a damn shit about dimes playing knows this but noone will attempt to use "dimes tuning" for his own work or band. for me its pretty much like using signature guitars etc ... it has been done before. anyways youre right ...if you want to cover pantera songs you have to tune down 1/4 to whatever tuning in order to get the original sound otherwise it will sound shit

i think it can also be done using a whammy, using the down-tune option

Did he pay much attention to scales, then?

I mean, are they still relevant?

lots of bands tune down a half step. Even Extream on the first album.

it's half a half step.

Thank you. I thought that was made blatantly obvious by now.

oh right...im very sorry. didnt read well

yes, but that was due to poor equipment, not on purpose.

Right.

I know Killing is My Business is off a quarter step, as well as Dark Angel - Darkness Descends, Wehrmacht - Biermacht, Razor's older stuff, among others. We should start up a sticky tunings thread in the tab questions/requests forum.

Dimebag just ghetto tuned his guitars (by ear) so thats why theyre all tuned a little bit flat.

even discrepancy from the proper frequency can happen on account of the recordings being sped up or slowed down as well.

Nah man he had guitar techs change his strings and all that, he even talked about how it was tradition for him to tune down a 1/4 step... Whatever works...

i bet the bass player in pantera really appreciated that

They played together for about 20 years. I bet he got used to it at some point. I doubt either one had tuned their own instruments in a decade, anyway.

with dimes playing, its so real im thinking he didnt have to worry about scales. more like he did whatever the fuck he wanted, and it worked

Nah, he used a lot of pentatonics and diatonics.

cool

btw, how do you know this?

Well, I've played a few of his solos, and I saw that the pattern that Dimebag used matched that of a pentatonic, and sometimes the major / minor scale :homer: