Question for.....

by RayLee, Wednesday, July 05, 2023, 00:11 (507 days ago)

real guitar pickers here amongst us......

But first a little background......the lead guitarist of our church's praise band does a subtlety restrained overdriven bluesy zippity-doo-dah in between the singing but there are songs which something more primitive and twangy would be more appropriate. So I was asked to instruct him on the banjo but the problem is I am self-taught and don't play the ubiquitous conventional open g scrugg/reno style. So the guitarist aquires a six-string banjo in hopes that there would be no learning curve what with the same tuning as his les paul. Turns out the low e & a & d are heavy gauged and plunky sounding. So we experimented with lighter strings where the fatter were. Nashville tuning it is called. It is supposed to give a six string banjo the twang of a conventional banjo. Problem is the second string (b) is the same gauge/tuning octave as the old conventional tuning so that b is now oddly lower than the rest and sounds out of place. Which sets up the scenario for my question......

What string gauge/type would allow that 2nd string position tune a whole octave higher b ? Is this even possible ?