Ok to keep switching between tunings

[ChrisNJ]

Hope this isn't a dumb question, but is it ok for the guitar itself when I go back and forth between regular tuning and drop D tuning? Lowering and raising the low E string won't affect intonation and the truss rod will it? How about going from one tuning to another, for example, say going from normal tuning to open G to dadgad to the rain song tuning back to normal tuning to etc etc etc?

[orsino]

Not dumb at all. You care about your instrument. Chris as long as you are tuning up above EADGBE, shouldn't be a problem tuning up and down as long as you stay below standard tuning. The problem comes in when you try the higher tunings. Some guitars can handle Nashville tuning etc. Check with the manufacturer though if you want to go higher.

Tuning up and down below standard will shorten string life though. Nice to have two guitars, one you keep in standard and one you go from DADGAD to C-GAD, etc. Quicker tuning that way as well.

[54merk]

Yep should not hurt a thing to change into out of "slack" tunings.

 

When you say Drop D you mean just lowering the E down to D. Dropping down one string is really no big deal at all and will hurt affect your guitar. I used to move between standard and open D quite a bit but got sick and tired of retuning so I bought a resonator guitar for the open tunings. Also, High Nashville tuning will not hurt a guitar either. It just replaces the low E, A, D and G with the high octave strings from a 12 string set.