12-string advice

waif

Member
Sep 7, 2007
18,908
13
38
Montreal
I know very little about 12-strings, but I had an idea the other day. I play in a power trio doing doom stuff and it can be a bit of a challenge to make things sound full when playing higher up. I remembered that Matt Pike from High on Fire plays a custom 9-string, with the higher strings being doubled and the 3 bottom strings being standard. My thought was that I could get a 12-string and string the top 3 strings like a normal 12 string, but on the bottom 3 strings use two normal strings, i.e. if I was using 50s I would have 2 50-guage E strings. My question to you is: is this possible, and if so, is it retarded?

Please forgive any mistakes as far as terminology goes. I know exactly as much as I need to as far as gear goes, which is to say, not much at all.