Drop Tunings: Setup, Strings and Tone Down Low

What the low string actually needs

4. THE TOP FOUR STRINGS

Djent guitar ▸ Electric guitar — An eight-string contains an ordinary guitar. Almost nobody plays it as one.

The variable that moves: Sustain and melody move into the transient instrument — and have to be routed away from the strings that can't support them.

Hinge (what already agrees): The instrument already is the other instrument. An 8-string in standard F♯ tuning is F♯–B–E–A–D–G–B–E — the top six strings are a guitar in standard tuning with a B and an E on top of them. There is no gap to bridge in the hardware. Everything separating the two is signal chain and habit.

Friction (what fights): Every element of the djent chain is a sustain-killing device, and the physics is against the low strings too. The gate closes after 10–50 ms. The mute is constant. The mix assigns the guitar to the transient band. And the low strings have a real inharmonicity problem — fₙ = n·f₀·√(1 + B·n²), where B grows with short, thick, low-tension strings, so a sustained low note's overtones run sharp of the true series and the note reads as indistinct rather than rich. You cannot simply hold a low F♯ and expect it to sing.

Resolution: Split the instrument into two signal paths by string group, and put the melody where the physics works. The bottom two or three strings do rhythm only: gated, muted, TS in front, high-passed, transient-forward. The top four strings bypass the gate and the overdrive entirely and go to a clean-to-medium amp with reverb and long sustain — where the instrument is just a guitar, inharmonicity is negligible and notes ring properly. One player, one instrument, two chains that never meet. This is audibly what the best extended-range players actually do, and it is almost never described as two chains, which is why it's so often imitated badly.

Recipe

• Chassis: 8-string, multiscale if possible, 25.5" treble to 27–28" bass
• Path A — bottom two or three strings: gate at 0.1–1 ms / 10–50 ms, TS front end, high-pass at 100–140 Hz, palm-muted throughout, transient at 2–4 kHz
• Path B — top four strings: no gate, no overdrive, clean-to-medium amp, long reverb, full sustain, no high-pass
• Melodic content lives exclusively in Path B. This is a hard rule and it is a physics rule, not a taste one
• Articulation in Path B: wide vibrato, long bends, sustained ringing notes, extended chord voicings — thirds are fine here because there's no gain to intermodulate them
• The two paths never sound simultaneously in the same register. Alternate them, or stack them as rhythm-underneath-melody
• Tempo and meter: keep the polymetric rhythm figure in Path A while Path B phrases in straight time over the top
• Avoid: running the top strings through the gate. That single routing decision is the difference between this merge and an ordinary djent track.

5. THE ONLY INSTRUMENT WITH A FUNDAMENTAL

Bass guitar ▸ Djent guitar — The eight-string did not go below the bass. It climbed into its lap.

The variable that moves: The transient moves into the low instrument — in the one merge where both instruments are physically fighting for the same band.

Hinge (what already agrees): They are in the same frequency range, and that is a measurable fact rather than a figure of speech. An 8-string's low F♯ is 46.25 Hz; a bass low E is 41.20 Hz. A 9-string's low C♯ is 34.65 Hz; a 5-string bass low B is 30.87 Hz. The guitar sits just above the bass in both cases. There is no natural separation left to rely on, which is exactly why this is the merge with the most to gain.

Friction (what fights): And that is also the problem, not the hinge. Both instruments want the same 40–120 Hz, and the sources are candid that there is no standard solution — recommended crossover points disagree by hundreds of Hz between credible engineers, and even specialised djent-production guides describe it as "a bit of a challenge" without offering numbers. Mansoor states the principle without a formula: "The less overlapping frequencies you have, the more perceived space you have in a mix."

Resolution: Assign the sub-100 Hz band to exactly one instrument, and it has to be the bass — then give the bass the guitar's transient too. High-pass the guitar at 100–140 Hz so its low fundamental is gone and its pitch is reconstructed from harmonics; the bass keeps everything below and is the only source of an actual fundamental in the track. Then split the bass and apply the djent treatment to its upper band only: distorted, gated, so the bass generates its own hard click at 2–4 kHz. The result is an inversion of the usual hierarchy — the bass is carrying both the weight and a percussive attack, and the guitar has been reduced to pure midrange and transient. It is the most useful arrangement in this guide and almost nobody sets it up deliberately.

Recipe

• Chassis: bass guitar, split into two bands as standard — clean low-passed at 100–300 Hz, distorted high-passed at 450 Hz–1 kHz
• The rule that makes it work: the guitar is high-passed at 100–140 Hz. The bass owns everything below, alone
• Bass upper band gets the djent chain: distortion plus a gate at 0.1–1 ms / 10–50 ms, so the bass has its own 2–4 kHz click
• Bass lower band keeps bass discipline: compressed at 5:1 or harder, 5–10 dB reduction, completely consistent
• Fresh roundwounds, played with a pick near the bridge — you need the upper harmonic content to compete
• Kick separation: narrow-Q dynamic EQ pulling ~3 dB at the kick's fundamental (around 60–70 Hz) out of the bass, not broad ducking
• Transient collision warning: the kick's beater click (2–8 kHz) and the guitar's pick attack (2–4 kHz) already overlap. Adding a third click from the bass means all three need separating by timing and panning, not EQ alone
• Avoid: letting the guitar keep anything below 100 Hz. One instrument owns the fundamental, and in this merge it is not the guitar.

2. SPLIT IT AT 450

Bass guitar ▸ Electric guitar — The midrange is already there. The cabinet is what removes it.

The variable that moves: The midrange identity moves into the low instrument — and the compression that makes a bass work has to be confined to half of it.

Hinge (what already agrees): The bass already has the guitar's midrange and most players never hear it. Measured on one instrument: through a miked 1×15 the 500 Hz region sits more than 15 dB below the 150 Hz peak; on the DI that gap is 5–6 dB. Through a 4×10 it exceeds 20 dB. The raw instrument is far more midrange-forward than the sound it's traditionally presented as — the cab is a subtractive device. Take the DI and you already have most of a guitar.

Friction (what fights): But the two instruments demand opposite dynamics. Standard bass practice is a 5:1 to 10:1 ratio with 5–10 dB of gain reduction routinely, explicitly aiming at "very little dynamic range," because inconsistency in the low end reads as weakness rather than expression. The electric guitar's identity is the opposite: the varying pick attack is the character. Compress a bass the way a bass gets compressed and you have destroyed the exact transient that would let it read as a lead voice.

Resolution: Split the instrument and compress only the half that needs it. The documented crossover: a clean low band low-passed at 100–300 Hz, compressed hard, doing the structural job; a distorted high band high-passed at 450 Hz–1 kHz, left comparatively dynamic and treated exactly like a guitar — overdrive in front, amp character, pick attack intact. The low band gets bass discipline; the high band gets guitar freedom. Then pluck near the bridge so (1/n²)·sin(nπa/L) keeps the upper harmonics excited, and let the high band carry melody in the upper register.

Recipe

• Chassis: bass guitar, standard 34" scale, roundwounds, recorded DI and split
• Low band: low-pass at 100–300 Hz, compressed at 5:1 or harder with 5–10 dB reduction. Simple, sine-like, structural
• High band: high-pass at 450 Hz–1 kHz, distorted, lightly compressed or not at all — the transient survives here or nowhere
• Plucking: near the bridge. Bright, nasal, harmonically dense — the physics is (1/n²)·sin(nπa/L)
• Playing: melodic and upper-register, with slides, bends and natural harmonics — the high band is being asked to behave like a lead guitar
• Pickup: bridge position, or blend two so the phase cancellation scoops the mids the way a Jazz bass does, then re-boost only in the high band
• Reference correction: if it's coming out too polite, cut about 8 dB at 500 Hz and add 4 dB at 100–120 Hz on the low band only — the documented DI-to-cabinet correction
• Avoid: compressing the two bands together. One compressor across the whole instrument collapses the merge back into an ordinary bass.