I really like Pachelbel’s Canon so I found a super simple bass TAB for it. But, sadly, it was in BEAD tuning and I only have a 4-string piccolo bass.

But just for the halibut I down-tuned the Ibanez Mikro with the guitar guage strings a whole step down from EADG to BEAD. And it almost worked.

The Organ Tone is just partly successful. Letting the strings twang at all destroys the keyboard illusion.

Hard to not play twangy with a real low action and roundwound strings. Needs compression as I tried to play loud enough to be heard while not twanging.

I knew it would make the strings floppy and hard to play, and that the action would be very low indeed.

In addition I wanted to try the organ tone, which means I should sound clean and not twangy, hard to finger so softly yet firmly enough. You can hear me struggling even more than usual. But it was fun.

So I decided to record a few more in strange, down-tuned D, and Fender LT25 Rumble bass amp organ and chorus tones. For your amusement.

I like the Fender Rumble LT25’s Chorus Tone. Too bad they don’t allow any attenuation of the effect. Sometimes a little goes a long way with cheap student bass amp effects and tones.

The old Roland Bass Cube has Fender beat there, with dials to cut or boost the effect: along with good drum tracks. The Fender has none. Though the Rumble25 has a better tone.

It was an interesting experiment but not useful. Too hard to play floppy strings with ultra low action, and featuring too-sharp intonation played up the neck.

But definitely weird. I can see the allure of the 5-string bass a little. Down tuning a normal 34 inch bass might work, certainly E flat down tuning is pretty common. Doesn’t work that well in piccolo bass, as you can hear.

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