Finally had a proper go at cross-tuning for Da Full Rigged Ship after last week's session and I love the sound, but my bottom two strings will NOT stay up. Retune, play one tune, they've sagged a quarter tone. Old strings? Old fiddle? Old me?
Any tricks from the folk who play in AEAE regularly?
Completely normal for the first while — the string needs to take a set at the new tension. Tune up, leave it half an hour, tune again. By the third session it'll sit. If the G is more than a few years old though, new strings first.
What Magnie said, plus a soft pencil in the nut and bridge grooves so the string moves freely. If you're doing it a lot, some folk keep a second fiddle permanently in AEAE — lofts full of spare fiddles in this county, ask around.
The pencil trick worked a treat — held for the whole slow session last night. A second fiddle feels like a slippery slope but I notice I'm already checking the classifieds…