Tuned my 12-string down to open C and like the sound, but my strings (medium gauge) seems to be a bit light. Medium seems to be the heaviest gauge available where I buy strings, have anybody got advice on what gauge to use and where to get them?
Be careful with a 12 string about string gauges. If this guitar's from a maker that's still around, ask them what gauges they recommend for the tuning.
D'Addario has a pdf document on their site listing the tensions for every string they make at various pitches over what they consider the useful range for that gauge. You can use that to pick gauges that will give about the same total tension as the strings you've been using in the tuning you've been using. You may have to buy separate strings in those gauges to make your own custom sets. I've done that with the bulk strings at: http://juststrings.com/ I don't have a 12-string, so I can't give you much more specific advice.
Open C's an interesting tuning. Not one of the traditional tunings used in blues. I don't know when it originated, but it looks to me to have started with the folkie fingerpickers in the '50s or '60s. It's a third main type of open tuning pattern after Open D and Open G. Open D has the third on the third string, Open G has the third on the second string, and Open C has the third on the first string. Like Open D, it has three strings tuned to the root note. The rest of it is a five string power chord! CGCGCE
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
What I called open C actually meant dropping open D a whole step, i.e. CGCEbGC. Good to get the terminology right! Have me excused for messing up with names of tunings! Now I tried to tune to the real open C and that calls for no heavy strings, apart for maybe the 6th course. I actually broke the high string in the third course when tuning to G. Ordering bulk strings is really a good idea when you want to experiment with different tunings, and also to have some spares for those which most easily breaks.
Lots of people do tune Open D up or down. I call that tuning tuned down to C "C Vestapol" to keep it straight. Vestapol tuning is an old name for Open D that most fingerpickers recognize.
Went out to listen to my old teacher perform with his singer friend the other night. He was using the Open D pattern tuned all the way up to G, instead of the usual Open G!
On the "real" Open C, though, the only string tuned up from standard pitch is the second string tuned from B to C. The first string E is the same, the third string G is the same, and the rest are tuned down.
There is a lot of confusion in tuning names. There's a lesson on open tunings by David Hodge on this site, in which he uses "Open F" as an example. Says Jimmy Page used it to play Bron Yr Aur. It's Open G tuned down a step. (I wonder if he really did that, since Mr. Page says he recorded "When The Levee Breaks" on a Fender 12-string in Open G and slowed down the recording to F pitch to "thicken up the sound.") But a friend of mine commonly uses the Open D/Open E pattern tuned up to F and calls that "Open F." Only way to avoid all confusion is to spell out the tuning. But I like the "Vestapol" (Open D pattern) and "Spanish" (Open G pattern) terminology, which has a history going back to the mid-nineteenth century.
:D
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
