The Steel Guitar Forum

My good friend Basil Hendricks tunes to A7th, what a great sound he gets! His tuning is on his web site.I have his CD,"My Guitar and I" Does a great job on it. Joe

Im with Brian on this.

In 1954 I was playing the A6th on a Rickenbacker Bakelite 8 string lap steel. (Boy do I wish I still owned that guitar) I carried that tuning over to my Fender Triple Neck Custom and then to my Fender 1000, which came from the factory so equipped.

Jody Carver did a lot on A6th when I used to follow him around in the '50's from gig to gig in New York City and what he played was the last word in steel guitar music.

Jody's A9th tuning is really the thing that sparked an overwhelming interest for me in the "A" tunings.

I still use the A6th and a variation of the A9th on my Fender Stringmaster T-8. It's ALL there on the A9th. With the 4th string tuned to a G rather than an F# you can play passing chords, 7ths, 9ths, etc. AND you have all the basics of an E6th tuning with proper bar placement and slants.

Bob Strum has an excelent example of A6th playing in an E9th configuration on his recent CD "Strum The Gospel". I could've sworn he was playing E9th.

Curly Chalker played the C6th against an Ami7th or vice versa, depending how you look at it. Bar placement and fret position playing with pedals is a science unto itself. I use C6th on my 1968 Emmons D-10 push-pull, but I have recently gotten into the E9th/B6th setup on my Fessenden U-12. It's all there!

With the E9th tuning, you also create an A6th tuning with the A& B pedals down and a quasi-B6th with the E to Eb lever engaged (extended E9th) and it goes on and on.....it's up to the individual player's innovative style and imagination to use what's available to him to his best musical advantage. Master your guitar and the tuning doesn't really matter that much. (I'm a long way from mastering the steel guitar, but I've learned a lot over the past 49 years and A6th is a strong foundation for good sounding steel work, especially in pop music and Western Swing and it's always been a mainstay in Hawaiian music).

Topic moved to the "Pedal Steel" section of the Forum