Tune Matic Guitar
What's a good thrash metal guitar set up?
GUITAR: Epiphone Special (not II, GT or Les Paul), 2 pickups - treble/rhythm, volume and tone knobs, bridge doesn't have tune-o-matic. AMP: Marshall MG10, clean and overdrive channels, clean/overdrive volume, gain, and contour knobs.
I'm a beginner, been playing a few weeks, and want to play thrash metal. And how do I get different tunings such as drop-C and drop-D, I am new to all these terms.
Your guitar setup sounds good, you won't have to dabble with any of it much. Plus, you don't need the exact tone of a band to practice their songs, you know? Since you're doing thrash metal, one technique you need to practice is downpicking. Other genres have a lot of alternate picking (up and down), but thrash relies heavily on down picking. I'd suggest you practice playing the first minute or so of Master Of Puppets (Metallica of course) by only downpicking. Start out very slow, get the feel for the song, and then increase your speed.
Some other songs to check out are World Painted Blood by Slayer (Slayer uses lots of alternate picking), Symphony Of Destruction by Megadeth, Transylvania by Iron Maiden, Among The Living by Anthrax, Peace Sells by Megadeth, Jump In The Fire by Metallica, Seemingly Endless Time by Death Angel, Ride The Lightning by Metallica, Snakes For The Divine by High On Fire, and Oblivion by Mastodon.
Now, for tunings... There's not a lot of thrash bands that go into Drop C or Drop D, so you should be fine in Standard. But what that means is the strings are dropped to different tunings. With Drop D, you keep every string in standard, but drop the low E string.
So, Standard is EADGBe. Dropping the E makes it DADGBE. You can do this by ear, or with a tuner. I'd suggest getting a tuner since you're just a beginner.
Drop C on the other hand, is taking it even lower. You're dropping every string down a whole step, and then dropping the E string down another. You start out with EADGBe. Then, you drop it down one step to DGCFAd, That's called D Standard - bands such as Vital Remains and Death use it. Then, you take the D and drop it down to C. Drop C is CGCFAd.
Now, the other thing to consider is that going to dropped tunings means you need thicker strings. The tension is increased when you go to dropped tunings, so standard strings won't cut it. Right now, you're probably running .09s or .10s. For D standard and Eb, you want to get at least .10s. For D standard, .11s will be stable, and there won't be much slack on your string when dropped. Drop C though, you'll have to get .12s. I use .12s for Drop B, so they can definitely work in Drop C. And I have a pair of .13s for Drop A#.
Brand of string doesn't really matter, but I find D'Addarios to be the best for lighter gauge strings, and DR DDTs for down tuned-ready strings.
Phew. Welcome to the world of guitar.