About to get my second ever guitar and need some advice

[Ben Thorpe]

I’m thinking about getting my second guitar quite soon (when I get the money), nothing too expensive. Been looking at some Ibanez guitars going prett cheap for around £150. When I get it I’m going to modify it so I can go down to drop B and drop A tuning because I want to play Slipknot/ nu-metal songs which I can’t with my current guitar, due to the medium string gauge it has. I’ll have two diferent guitars for two different styles, my standard E tuned Yamaha, and a low tuned (drop B/A) guitar for the far heavier stuff.
Apart from heavy gauge strings, and changing the nut to accomodate the thicker strings, any other modifications I’ll need to do to my guitar? Any tips or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. P.S. I’m keeping my price point relatively low, no more than £200. And I’m not very tech savy when it comes to guitar, so no complicated terminology (try and keep the language simple)! Thanks!

 

[idssdi]

With thicker strings it usually is also kinda nescecary to have the action (the height of your strings) a bit higher because thicker strings will have buzz a lot earlier.

 

[Ed Seith]

For that tuning and those strings, you may want to look at what’s known as a baritone guitar to begin with. Because it’s built from the start to be in B standard tuning, all of those changes are already made to it, and the scale length is a little longer (more space between frets) which totally sucks for my little sausage fingers, but helps with note clarity and intonation and stuff when tuned that low (kind of how a bass guitar’s frets are spaced, but not as much).

 

[Dan Shipway]

If you are willing to go a bit higher you can buy a jackson js32q dka
It costs 260 is but I own one and it is amazing
It is 7/8 the size of a full size guitar and has a floyd rose, it is complicated to use at first but given time it will be easier.
https://www.andertons.co.uk/guitar-dept/electric-guitars/modern-body-guitars/jackson-js-series-arch-top-js32q-dka-in-trans-blue
I have emg Zakk Wylde pickups but the stock ones sound really great too.

 

[Ben Thorpe]

Yeah, I checked out the baritone guitar, unfortunately it’s quite far out of my price range at the moment. But I’ll look into it more when I have the money

 

[Calvin Phillips]

I dont know what your value is in canadian dollars lol