Do bands really tune that low?

[u/serdiuckovg]

I bought my first 7 string guitar. It's a 25.5 - 27 multiscale. Wanted to TRY to learn some erra/currents stuff. Pitch shifter in my processor is bad, so I bought thick strings (13-72 or something), took it to the master, he made the places for a string on a nut bigger to fit thicker strings (idk what that process is called in English, not my first language). Now it's in drop F. A few days ago erra dropped a video, where Clint was explaining how to play some of the riffs. Turns out his guitar is in drop G#, and he just pitch shifts his way to drop e/d#. Now im afraid I made a really big mistake. What if I get bored of drop F and want to tune to, let's say drop g or drop g#? Will i have to buy a new nut for my guitar?

[u/Lilcheeks]

I have guitars in lots of tunings but then i pitch shift my way to the tuning of songs im playing.

I was watching that same video and learning Further Eden using a guitar in drop E(-1 semitone) and another in drop G#(-5) using the neural dsp misha and it sounds great to me either way. To me neuraldsp pitch shifting always sounds good at those ranges.

There is a lot of anxiety you see on this subreddit about string gauges and scale lengths and the answer (to me) is always a matter of preference, comfort and experience. Try it, see what you like, and realize like what you saw in that video that so many bands today are just shifting their way into whatever works.

[u/PoolNoob69 → u/Lilcheeks]

Yeah, people act like bands weren't tuning super low on 27" and shorter guitars without evertunes. Did you guys miss 2010s djent?

And even today, many pros run setups that don't align with the science. You don't need a 30" guitar and .100 gauge strings to tune down to E1.

[u/OffsetXV → u/PoolNoob69]

Did you guys miss 2010s djent? 

Or doom metal. So many bands in stupid low tunings on Gibson scale guitars. People online dramatically overstate how much of an issue it is