Costellos tenor

[dcav]

Anyone here have a chance to play this guitar at Gruhns when it was up for sale years ago? I know it's a long shot.....

but if you did, what was the price tag at the time? and your thoughts on this guitar?

http://www.thecavanproject.com/elvis-costello-tenor-guitar/

dc

[Cornfield]

Is he playing in 5ths tuning or Chicago?

[dcav]

I'm pretty sure it's standard guitar tuning Cornfield, minus 2. Why is it called Chicago tuning ?

[Cornfield]

I'm pretty sure it's standard guitar tuning Cornfield, minus 2. Why is it called Chicago tuning ?

Beats me.
Chicago tuning on tenor guitar DGBE
Spanish tuning on 6 string DGDGBD
Vestapol tuning on 6 string DADF#AD
Where these names came from, I don't know.

[dcav]

Thinking of 6 string.......https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grBmQwLSlDw
How strong was this guy? This is one of my fav clips of SRV......
took a god damn flying machine to bring him down....

[dcav]

I guess the piano is the perfect instrument....since it can only be tuned one way! I love it all right

[Lord of the Badgers]

One day I'll tune a tenor Chicago styles.
Oh who am I kidding?! Lol.
Love that guitar of Declan's. It's a beauty. Envious!!

[crisscross]

Love that guitar of Declan's. It's a beauty. Envious!!
The Eastwood Classic Tenor seems to be the most similar affordable tenor guitar you can get.
As soon as it gets available in Germany, I'm gone to get one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM1sqNMUNJw

[Cornfield]

I guess the piano is the perfect instrument....since it can only be tuned one way! I love it all right

Not so fast there. Lots of info on piano tuning, past and present, is available on the Internet. When Bach wrote "The Well Tempered Clavier" he was writing about a newer tuning. The following is a snippet from Wikipedia.

"Historically, keyboard instruments were tuned using just intonation, pythagorean tuning and meantone temperament meaning that such instruments could sound "in tune" in one key, or some keys, but would then have more dissonance in other keys.[7] The development of well temperament allowed fixed-pitch instruments to play reasonably well in all of the keys. The famous "Well-Tempered Clavier" by Johann Sebastian Bach took advantage of this breakthrough, with preludes and fugues written for all 24 major and minor keys.[8] However, while unpleasant intervals (such as the wolf interval) were avoided, the sizes of intervals were still not consistent between keys, and so each key still had its own distinctive character. During the 1700s this variation led to an increase in the use of equal temperament, in which the frequency ratio between each pair of adjacent notes on the keyboard was made equal, allowing music to be transposed between keys without changing the relationship between notes.[9] "

[AndyV]

I'm pretty sure it's standard guitar tuning Cornfield, minus 2. Why is it called Chicago tuning ?

A year or two ago someone on the TGR explained. He bought a tenor in the 60's when the folk craze was waning. The music store was promoting tenors guitars tuned to "Chicago tuning". The store owner explained that this was a marketing term a manufacturer came up with trying to give cachet to what was becoming dead stock.

[Charles E.]

Sorry but plectrum banjo players have been using "Chicago tuning" tuning since the jazz age.

[AndyV]

Charley, Do you know if they were calling it Chicago tuning, or just that it was in use?

In any case this doesn't mean that some marketer didn't suggest to their retailers to use the term for the reasons stated in that account.

[Lord of the Badgers]

The Eastwood Classic Tenor seems to be the most similar affordable tenor guitar you can get.
As soon as it gets available in Germany, I'm gone to get one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kM1sqNMUNJw

Yeah. The "natural" finish is my fav. might have to sell my electric octave - it's a nice instrument but I don't need paired strings.

[Cornfield]

Yeah. The "natural" finish is my fav. might have to sell my electric octave - it's a nice instrument but I don't need paired strings.

I you remove every other string, ta-da! You'll find out quick if you prefer 4 strings.

[Lord of the Badgers]

Did occur to me after I posted...

[Verne Andru]

Charley, Do you know if they were calling it Chicago tuning, or just that it was in use?


While far from definitive, my recollection is that there were tenor guitars around but not many who knew how to play in 5ths. In a time when instruments were scare, guitar players would tune them DGBE (high guitar strings) so every instrument was in use. As with all things anecdotal, it could have either started in Chicago or a reference was made to that and stuck.

I remember somebody handing me a tenor when I was a kid saying, "here's a small one just your size" or something to that effect.