Clinton is right, or at least half-right. If you only want to drop your bass D, you put your Kyser or Shubb on from the high string side and just not cover the E string. If I remember correctly, the Kyser D-tuning capo actually spaces four strings and allows you to effectively "drop" both the high and the low E. I suspect a little hacksaw work on any Kyser or Shubb (just cutting away part of the rubber pad) would be a reasonable approximation.

I find these tunings easy enough to get in and out of so I never pursued the capos. Of course, they would ease the "string fatique" of constant pitch change.

Stefan Grosmann also recommends that when you are lowering the pitch on a string that you go lower than the desired pitch and then bring the string back up to pitch. He also says it helps prevent the string pitch from altering as you play. So that "string memory" may be real. I would suspect that since metal is elastic (just not very elastic) that the "memory" idea has validity.

Whistlestop and Lucius' string yanking has some credibility as well.

I'm not sure anyone has addressed the "why" of open tunings. Most everyone is sucked in by the lush sounds of multiple open strings sounding the same note. If you have not tried it Moonchild, seriously consider not doing it. You can see from all of these postings the mindfield you run into when you consider stepping out of standard tuning (**grin**). Them blues boys can bend one string out of pitch while leaving an adjacent open string in the same pitch. Talk about your musical tension, whoo boy!!!

Roger in Baltimore

Roger in Baltimore