Hipshot have been pretty innovative since the very early days of production, always pushing and for new ways to get the very best out of the tuning capabilities and stabilities or your Bass.

Probably one of their flag ship products, alongside the ever popular Tremsetter <LINK> are these amazing little drop tuners know as “Bass Xtenders” officially, we’ve seen them called D-Tuners, Drop D Tuners, Swing Tuners, Drop tuners – all fairly confusing – but all along the same lines.

The basic idea is actually pretty ingenious – by using a tensioned arm, attached to the machine head, it’s possible to pivot the tuner by a set amount, and drop into a new note. In essence the Hipshot Guitar Xtender allows you to flip your E to D (or as low as C!) with the flip of a lever!

This makes it absolutely ideal if you’re looking to go from standard tuning to any of the Drop tunings that are becoming ever more popular in modern playing, the Xtender is designed to fit specifically to the Low E string, and this model, the HE6Y-38 , is built around Hipshots HE6 Series, also known as the Ultralites - a rock solid tuner, designed to be as light as possible.

Fairly easy to install, with only minimal modification to the guitar required – setup couldn’t be simpler, with the Lever arm in the up position, the “E” tuning is set with the traditional tuning button on top of the machine head. The new “lower” tuning is set using the small thumb screw on the tuner body.