I just bought a used transcale baritone in the blue. I'm really liking it! However the prior owner just had it in standard tuning. I thought that can't be right so I tuned everything down a whole step. Seems like that was Steinberger's intention since the literature for the model says to roll the built in capo up "a couple of frets" to play like a regular guitar. Plus DGCFAD tuning would make sense because of the two fret offset between the two different sets of fret markers.
Still, wikipedia speaks of baritone guitars as usually tuned down a perfect fifth, a perfect fourth, or a major third. Wow, that's a long way. So my question is what is Steinberger's intention here? I'm sure the guitar is engineered to play optimally at some given string tension or tuning, so before I go buy a set of the 12/68 baritone strings I'd like to know what tuning the mfg suggests for them?
I didn't get any owner's manual. Funny that in all the info online on the st-2fpa nowhere does it actually say how it is tuned except the vague idea that it is a baritone guitar.