Buddy Merrill Quad tuning

[Jeff Mead]

Buddy Merrill playing South has been posted here many times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcipRLzk4zM

Does anyone know what tunings he used on the 4 necks?

[Nic Neufeld]

I can hazard some guesses maybe just by listening!

2nd neck (from him), that he starts with...D9? Sounded like C6, but the fourth string is flatted to make a D9 variant of C6 I think.

3rd neck (from him), sounds like plain A6 to me.

1st neck from him, I'm not an expert on E13 but that sounds funky enough to be an E13 with the 7th, 9th, 13th in it...

4th neck, the stock Fender recommended baritone A6 (E C# A F# E C# A F#).

[Jack Hanson]

Sorry I can't answer the question. But I love Buddy Merrill! Probably the first steel guitars I ever saw as a young lad were either Buddy with the Champagne Music Makers or the beautiful Marion Hall with Joe Maphis and Tex Ritter. Both were on Los Angeles TV shows that were beamed into the Naval Weapons Station at China Lake where I spent four impressionable years as a kid in the mid- to late-fifties. Good stuff!

[Andy Costigan]

hi Jeff.
if you check out J. Wilson's posts towards the bottom of the following link, Buddy's sister Gloria relays what Buddy can remember of his tunings.
viewtopic.php?p=1734372&highlight=#1734372

[Nic Neufeld]

That's a great find!

He was trying to remember the tunings he used on this particular song and came up with the following:

1st neck: (closest to him) this is the one he has trouble remembering, as he tuned it specifically for the song. He thinks it was E flat 6th, G on top.
2nd neck: C 6th, G on top
3rd neck: F 9th, G on top
4th neck: Same as 2nd neck, but 1 octave lower.

Most of the time, he used the same tunings but sometimes did tune 1 neck specifically for the song he was playing.

Certainly complicates things based on what I was thinking!

So, let's take that 2nd neck for starters. C6 sounds right, but note the fret positions...the audio is in key of C#, but based on his fret markers, best as I can make out, he's a fret or 2 off where he would normally be, so it may be that the audio was sped up at some point.

The first section doesn't seem to show the high G, but I think I hear it get used when he goes back to the second neck at around a minute. It sounded more like a "third on top" tuning to me at first, but then if you are as disciplined as he was, you'll only hit that high G when you want to!

I still think, based on the run at 0:30, that he had detuned the "G" to F#, rendering it a quasi D9 variant of C6, only because I can't see how else he would get that run there without (as appears to be the case) moving the bar. You could do it with a bar movement on the G string (shifting up by a fret as you move up) but I didn't see it.

Third neck next...

[Nic Neufeld]

3rd neck, based on the first section of it, sounds exactly like C6 high G to me. I was totally wrong about A6, I think I just heard a "top 5th" and assumed A6. It also shows pretty clearly what the original key was, and why the tape may have changed speeds...check out 0:49. He gets an add9 by pulling his bar back on the second fret...this was originally in key of D, based on second fret of C6. It's slowed down assumedly to C# (meaning he originally played it even faster??!).

Next bit o' evidence...1:48. Hammeron/pulloffs tell the story. Definitely original in D (as long as he didn't tune his steel guitar down, which I suppose is possible):

Code: Select all

G-2--0202----------------------------------------------------
E---------2--0202--------------------------------------------
C-----------------2-0202-------------------------------------
A-------------------------2-0202-------------------------2---
G---------------------------------2-0202---------------2-----
E-----------------------------------------2-0202-----2-------
C-------------------------------------------------2----------

Sounds like a really normal C6 neck there, with high G.

[Nic Neufeld]

Fourth neck, same as -third- neck but an octave lower, its fairly obvious because of the nice camera angle they got, high G type C6 (low root on 7th string), an octave down.

So to summarize my thinking:
Neck 4: high G C6 in baritone octave
Neck 3: high G C6 in normal octave
Neck 2: high G C6 with middle G flattened to F# for D9 chords
Neck 1: Really don't know but an E13-like tuning would be my best guess. No idea what an Eb 6 tuning would be...unless he meant, E, flatted 6? eg Eaug? But if it had as he said a G on top, would have to be an Eb to make that in the chord.

Could be wrong but it is a fun exercise to try and reverse engineer this stuff.