just recently i have been getting into micheal hedges, an amazing guitar talent
having researched him i found that nearly all of his stuff is performed of composed in Scordatura( alternate tunings)
i have been trying to emulate what he does with standard guitar turning but its not really cutting the mustard,and im afraid of tuning alternatly and going to high and snapping a string or that retuning constanly will cause me string to break sooner
so put simply
1.how high can my strings funtionly go without snapping
2.will retuning alot cause my strings to break sooner?
I don’t play guitar much but I do play Oldtime fiddle and 5 string banjo where we use various tunings often.
With light strings on my banjo and med. on my fiddle I’ve had no problem with breaking strings up to two steps above the commonly suggested tuning. Steel strings are more forgiving than gut or composition.
Often we retune a string that we might not even play because it makes the whole instrument resonate to that tuning.
On the banjo I retune not only for convenience, but to compensate for being tethered to the frets.