Many are indeed designed to be at concert but an awful lot of folks like the sound tuned lower with heavier gauge strings. AS Mick mentioned though, do have a care for what the builder thought in his design. A lot of Twelves are designed NOT to be tuned to standard and DO have their best sounds lower. Obviously the proper setup is critical no matter what you do.

Talk to the builder/manufacturer for their suggestions and of course you'll get some good info around here as well. Problem is you will also get some erroneous info around here too...LOL.

We had a really wonderful member around here, an excellent picker and fine teacher as well named Rick Fielding who died a few years ago (much too young). When he was a young man he had an experience where he believed the wrong guy about a new Twelve and the result of doing so. Here's the tale as Rick told it:

"Each of my 12 strings has it's own little memory but the worst was "Pedro" the Mexican built beauty that I bought when I was about twenty. The salesman said it was built to be tuned to pitch and I foolishly believed him. Now the problem was that my girlfriend at the time felt (justifiably so) that we should be saving our money, so when I purchased "Pedro" I snuck him into a closet for the night, planning to tell her about it the next day.(after I had thought up some story to justify my purchase) About 5am, a noise like a bazooka woke everyone up with a start in our communal rooming house. People were searching everywhere for the source of the explosion......but in my heart I knew what it was. I let someone else find the broken pieces of wood and wire, but I had to own up to it. Needless to say I got yelled at, AND lost Pedro one day after buying him!"

Spaw