Originally Posted by: 6strngs_2hmbkrsyeah, I haven't broken any strings in quite a while, the most I usually tune down has been to drop D, at least recently, I used to go to Db, or sometimes C, but I decided it's not necessary to drop tune in order to get some heavy-sounding metal riffs.

Well, yeah, you can look at it like that, but down tuning is essentially the same thing as a capo, only in the other direction. You're just changing the key of the song. Yeah, you get a deeper tone out of the deal as a side effect. Of course the whole down tuning for different keys is kind of voided out if you don't really experiment with other down tunings as well. Currently my Strat is tuned 1 step down. I usually play in standard E regardless though. Of all the serious projects I've got going on right now, only one of them uses standard E at that.