I'm envious of mandolin players who tune in fifths. The fret board is sooo intuitive to me. With reentrant tuning even chords sound fine. My next experiment is to tune my tenor banjo G3 D3 A3 E4. I tried the tuning on a tenor guitar and chords sound good to my ear. Then lightning struck and I thought, why not tune a 5-string G4 G2 D3 A3 E3 which might work for 2-finger thumb lead, as well as clawhammer playing the melody on strings 2,3,and 4. Have you heard of anything like that?
"ARCHIVED TOPIC: All-fifths tuning on a 5-string"
Edited by - pinenut on 10/13/2026 13:11:43
Fifths would make for too much stretching and/or position shifting.
Fourths makes lots more sense at the scale length of most 5-stringers, and is a traditional (though not very common) tuning: "D Cumberland Gap"= f#BEAD. Tune the thumb string to G, and it also works in G and C.
I guess the answer is "no" so far. I didn't see anything in the old thread that was the same as what I am thinking but I didn't read every single word in the thread. I have a 20" scale 5-string, similar to an octave mandolin, so chords and picking out notes is doable. It is interesting how the 5-string really is suited to playing in one or two keys. It has a unique sound and it can be played melodically and rhythmically, but at a cost.
I don't see any reason to not string your short-necked five-string with a set of standard tenor strings. It has the same scale as the 17-fret Deering tenor. And instruments tuned in fifths do have their charms, not the least of which is easy access to all keys.
There's an article I wrote for the Banjo Newsletter many years ago in which the strings are tuned either as the top four strings of a guitar or relatively like the bottom four strings of a guitar
https://www.banjohangout.org/tab/browse.asp?m=detail&v=17959
I've mostly given up on the idea of fifths tuning to facilitate playing by ear. It is an intuitive fretboard for a mandolin, or IT banjo, any instrument where melody is carried by playing individual strings. And there might be a place for it in 2-finger thumb lead (DAE__) but drone strings, and playing chords, seem hard to reconcile with fifths tuning.
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