tenor guitar ??

[c walker]

hello this is my first time on a guitar forum and im new to guitar..so please bear with..ive been learnin baritone ukulele fer about a year now tuned to.....D G B E....i love it.... its super fun and very very addicting...thing is...i wanna play electric....crunch. distortion..bluesy stuff..bends and whines......my brother gave me an old jackson kelly with twin humbuckers and some type of bridge with a tremelo...floyd rose?.im not sure...now thats fine and all but....i dont wanna relearn all my chords...lazy i guess......so heres my question.....can i get rid of the lowE and A strings and...POW........tenor electric?? will that mess up the neck?...tension an all..mabye just muting the e and a would be better..can i compensate via the truss rod?..also...with the fact that ill have extra room on the neck..can i cut a 4 sloted nut to give me a bit of room?...i know ill still have some room on the neck but i dont care..real electric tenors are soo expensive....so im tryin the cheepo rout...any and all help or comments would be sooo helpful and apreciated.....sorry fer so long winded... thanks..........walker

[MARK HARRIS]

No need to remove the strings, just start with what you know and then teach yourself the guitar at the same time. 

[Rory]

Walker, all you say there can be done & go for it to get a taste of tenor. If you find 4 strings is your thing... I’m not sure what you would consider expensive but Eastwood guitars make several nice electric tenor models in my opinion. I’ve had one for 5 years now paid $500 new for the Warren Ellis single pickup model. It’s now my main electric axe. I was skeptical but upon seeing the build quality & appointments, just not worth my time or money in materials to build one at this price & quality level. Other thing to take into consideration is a true tenor guitar will have a shorter 23” scale, longer than your bari but shorter than standard 6 string.FWIW.  Anyway u slice it turn it up and have fun!

Rory

[c walker]

rory.............thank you for responding so quickly...nice to know that some people are willin to help out the noobie.....one thing...what does FWIW mean?....im not real fluent in netspeak.....but anyway again thanks a pile........walker

[Rory]

For What It’s Worth. In other words just one mans opinion in a giant internet sea of opinions! 

[Ned Knepp]

Hi Walker, 

First, as far as needing to learn new cords for the electric 6 string goes, the cords your trying to keep are actually just simplified version of what you need for the 6 string in standard tuning. You would only be adding an E and A string to what you already have ( EA-DGBE) You will really only need to learn where to place your fingers on the two "new" strings to have the "new" cord. In fact, some of those cords don't even use those two of you don't want to.  In that way you can move back and forth between both instruments.

 As has been pointed out already, true tenor guitars use a different scale length than a standard guitar or a baritone uke.    Also, there are a few different tuning for tenor guitar, one of which is like your uke but I think the best reason to play a tenor is to have a different sound than all the other guitars so I think traditional tuning sounds best. This means that it would be tuned in "5ths" like a mandolin rather than in "3rds" like a guitar. Yes, you would need to learn new cords but it's not really all that hard to get used to moving back and forth between them.

 You could just remove the two strings you don't want, like you mentioned but I doubt you will be all that comfortable playing it in the long run because the neck will have a LOT of unused width which will end up in the way. There will also be some issue of something called the "setup" on the electric. Just removing the two heaviest strings on the guitar will change the way the remaining strings lay on the neck and there a very good chance that the neck will pull back enough that the 4 remaining strings might buzz or fret out because of the lower overall tension. FWIW, there may also be some issue with only having 4 strings passing over the 6 string pickup and it may mess with the tremolo function on the bridge but I don't really know because I'm "electric challenged". 

After all that, my honest opinion is that you will be happier, down the road, if you learned to play all 6 strings on the guitar AND, maybe, added a pickup to your uke or purchased an electric model.