I have a fretless Ibanez Iceman that I'm thinking of tuning in 5ths. This is partly because I've been playing a lot of fiddle and mandolin lately and have been really liking that tuning for melody playing, and party because playing chords on a fretless is kind of a lost cause anyway - in 5ths I'd at least be able to hit power chords with no trouble.

Has anyone here tried this? Because I've got a few questions:
1. does anyone make flatwound sets in the right sizes for this tuning?
2. if not, is there anywhere I can get mix-and-match flatwound string sets?
3. how do you deal with the high string? Seems like it would have to be impossibly thin unless I'm tuning super low.
4. even if I start at low C, my highest string ends up 3.5 steps above normal, ouch.
5. is this a terrible idea?

You guys are breaking my heart.

I'll go with #5.

It's not a terrible idea. It's tuning a guitar like a violin or a cello I just think you'll need such small strings that your you'll need to up the tension in the truss rod a lot. Nevermind the fact that the strings might feel unbelievably loose or unbelievably tight.

It's been done before though, so try it.

Sodopedia has an entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_fifths

Snowden - dude, what happened to your face? Seriously, it looks like you got the shit kicked outta ya?

I've done it with the octave strings on a 12 string before, sounded cool.

You can buy individual strings, and figure out which ones will work best for alt tunings.

www.juststrings.com

That's actually an old picture taken right after I got back from the ER after a nasty bike spill. You can't tell, but I had stitches in my mouth which felt really fucking weird. I'm handsome again now, but still have a scar inside my lip.

Anyhow, I've given this some serious thought and I think I'm going to try DAebf# with no high string for now - I'll only need one extra string and won't have to worry about finding individual flatwound strings. If that works out, I might cut a new nut (!) so I can add high octaves to the low D and A.

All right I did this and so far I like it. D E A b f#. I think I'm going to look into getting a blank bridge and new nut so I can space the strings evenly.