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Anyone here have experience in making a 5 string electric guitar for open G tuning? The tuning that Keith Richards often uses. Though I believe he typically just removes a string from a 6 string guitar rather than using custom guitars designed for 5 strings.

I may end up making my own, but does anyone know a source for a 5 string bridge? Hardtail or wraparound How about pickups? We are considering using a blade pickup, lipstick tube pickup or smooth chrome faced mini humbucker.

I realize that there are individual pole pieces below the humbucker cover. The strings would fall between them. Like in the crude diagram here. Do you think that this would work for picking up sound properly? I have heard of others doing this.

Why are you doing it the hard way?
No one will care if your pickup is wider or offset from the strings.
If you must, get some bladed pickups.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Hard way? Not sure what you mean.

We plan to use a Charlie Christian blade pickup in the neck. I suggested that a chrome faced humbucker without visible pole pieces might be an option and he is interested in a mini humbucker in the bridge and I am doing some searching to see if this is a feasible idea or if we should stick to blade style pickups.

At the moment I plan to buy individual saddles and make my own 5 string hard tail bridge.

Just make a regular guitar and call it the first six string five string guitar

Wow ya'll are so helpful. haha

I think it would be very unprofessional to build a dedicated 5 string guitar and simply use 6 pole piece pickups and have them off center with an unused pole piece just hanging out to one side.

One of the only "production" 5 string guitars I have come across is made by Teye. It's a very cool design to my eyes. Looks as though he is using a custom made 5 string bridge and he states that he uses a custom blade pickup.

I think we are likely to go with 2 blade pickups but if anyone had any thoughts on using a humbucker as I described above, I'd love to hear your thoughts. A parallel axis style pickup does a similar thing. Though of course those pole pieces are much closer together.

Just have Nordstrand wind you a custom 5 string pickup.

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Old growth, shmold growth!

They offer this service? Glancing at the website now and don't see anything about custom pickup winding. I have been assuming that any custom made 5 string pickup would probably run $200+. Complete estimate and guess though.

Pardon a really stupid question, but what do you gain by doing open G with only five strings? I play a lot of open G - acoustics and resonators (and open A on my Lester) - but I like all six strings (DGDGBD). I also play a fair amount in "high bass G" (a dobro tuning) - GBDGBD.

Ask Keith Richards I guess! Honestly I can't speak from experience because I haven't really used that tuning much. This is the setup that someone wants for a custom build. Perhaps it is to eliminate the heaviness of the low D and have the simplicity of 5 strings. Three D strings is maybe a bit redundant? All of the Rolling Stones songs that utilize this tuning do not use a low D string. After beginning to plan this build the idea of a 5 string guitar now appeals to me.

The lowest string gets in Keiths way, so he just stopped using it.

If you play like him, it makes sense to have one made that way.

Kinda cool, actually....

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Old growth, shmold growth!

Hey -- I too am in the process of building a 5-string guitar with an unusual tuning. Mine is going to be a baritone, and I'm setting it up to be tuned CGDAE. Maybe we could start a movement.

I got a 5-string hardtail-style bridge online from moongazer music (moongazermusic.com). I haven't installed it yet, but it seems to be well-constructed.

To avoid the pole-piece alignment issue, I'm just going with blade pickups -- DiMarzio Fast Tracks specifically. I have built 4-string guitars in the past, using both blade and pole-piece pickups designed for 6-strings, and I just think the blades look better.

And as for people who look at you funny and ask why you're building a guitar with a weird configuration, "Because I feel like it" is a perfectly acceptable answer.

Great post. Thanks so much for the link to moongazermusic. I will likely buy one of their bridges now rather than make my own.

I think there are many pu makers that would make custom pickups - its quite easy to wind your own actually - I think it was vivian? on this board who lent me her copy of "build your own p/u winder" by Jason Lollar - Im in the (perpetual?) process of making mine ....
I believe JL would wind custom p/u' s I dunno if Fralin would or not.... for a price maybe..
but there are many custom p/u winders in the world ... all of em are prolly looking for work... lol
However I am also of the sentiment of "if you want a guitar to play Richards-esque tunes - why not do what he did and just dispense with the appropriate hindrance string, no?
cheers
charliewood

Note that after all this time 'Keef' still just uses a regular Tele with the low 'D' left off. I think having a thinner neck would feel a little weird, like a banjo neck. If you're not making it a thinner neck then what's the point of the narrow bridge and pickup?
I also play in Open G, mostly slide but I do the Stones thing too and it's really not hard to simply avoid the low 'D'. Not trying to dissuade you, just think that maybe you're over-thinking it, particularly after reading that you've never really used the tuning before.

Edit: I missed that you were building this for somebody else. In that case, give 'em what they want.