The Steel Guitar Forum

yes you can get many of the same chords and tones, but,do not overlook...

To get those C6 tones on the E9th it is with AB Peds IN, so you are now basically locked in to playing an open tuning with no pedals available. The C6th as we know is an open tuning with NO PEDS and the ability to add to the tuning with Peds and levers.

IF you want to play an open tuning get a single 6 or 8 lap steel to go with your E9th and tune it to one of the excellent non pedal tunings that are out there .

just my take

t

There are often d-10's selling used at prices close enough to used s-10 prices, that I don't think price is the big issue, between singles and doubles.

To me it is about the weight. I actually love the sound of the E9 tuning, love the sound of the old 50's and 60's country stuff, I think Nashville would have been a fun place to be back then, and also most of the country rock stuff I listened to as a kid was played on a fairly simple E9 setup. This is the kind of music that makes me want to play the steel.

If a player can get everything that HE wants and NEEDS from an 8 string with no knee levers, should we make him feel like an incompetent beginner because he doesn't desire a more complex and cumbersome instrument?

I really wonder if a big part of the reason that more folks don't attempt the steel, is because of these sorts of attitudes. If someone were to come out with a solid (not a Maverick) s-10 with 3 pedals and 1 lever (lowering both Es) plain jane (no offense intended Jane) cheap enough , readily available steel guitar, I think it would sell. It would sell if the steel guitar players on this forum acted as if they supported the idea. As long as we tell folks "You're not really a steel player until you get a REAL guitar" they will continue to be afraid to even try. I think we should be saying "This is all you really need. When you've been playing a while, you may want more, but this is what you need."

I have d-10 guitars, and I really enjoy them. When I chose to carry an s-10 to a gig, I hope it doesn't make me look any worse than I am to any body else. After all, I can suck just as bad on two necks as I can on one.

He says that the rack and barrel Sho-Bud's aren't any good because the barrels come loose a lot while playing.

i had a sho bud professional D10 for a few years & never had them fall out - never
it might have been a bit noisy underneath & susceptible to temperature changes but i found it to be a neat steel w: a great sound ( BL710s)

another one here standing up for the C6 neck
it's great fer all kinds of styles.
i find it has more potential than the E9
(unless you use Randy Beavers copedent & have his chops)

2 necks are better than 1

He says that the rack and barrel Sho-Bud's aren't any good because the barrels come loose a lot while playing.

Yeah right. I had a flat tire on my car once, therefore all tires are no good, so stay away from tires.
Oh yeah, how about this one? I had a nylon tuner strip out on an all pull guitar once--therefore all-pull guitars are not to be relied on and are a terrible system. Need I go on?? Sheeesh.

Who ever said that about rack & barrels hasn't had the opportunity to play a rack & barrel guitar that was set up right, and they probably don't belong under a guitar in the first place.

David H. the rack and barrel guitars are about as heavey as your old MSA's and such. The real rack & barrel 'buds that would hurt you though, were the old crossovers with the cast aluminum frame. Now THAT'S a guitar that would make you snort like a weight lifter!!

If you check out the "For Sale: Instruments" section of the forum, I find it hard to find a S-10 steel. Occasionally I see a SD-10, but there sure are a lot of D-10's available, and there are a lot of sales made there too. What does this mean? Are people holding on to their singles? Getting rid of there doubles? The people buying the D-10s, for the most part, seem to be regular players that use the forum. I started out on D-10, went to U-12, and I'm back to D-10. Yes, experienced, knowledgable, talented players can get very similar sound and feel from an E9 to sound like a C6, but when you really get into the music that requires that tuning, you realize that the C6 has definite advantages. This is my opinion only, as a somewhat novice player, but as an very interested observer as well.

James wrote:

The real rack & barrel 'buds that would hurt you though, were the old crossovers with the cast iron frame. Now THAT'S a guitar that would make you snort like a weight lifter!!

My friend, James, is correct when he says thay are heavey, but just for accuracy's sake, the Crossover frame is not cast iron. It is cast aluminum and weighs 10 lbs.

The guy who told you that garbage about rack and barrel Sho-Buds definately didn't know what he was talking about.

Cheers!
Benton

I have a barrel tuning LDG and I have never had a barrel loosen in all of going on 8 years. I record and play everything with this(My only)ShoBud LDG...very very reliable.
Anything not properly set up will give you probs. Encluding a brand new steel. Heck I've had every brand new modern steel over here at one time or another; with mechanical problems; due to not properly being set up.
I feel anyone that loves and needs to play a D-10....I say NEVER give that up. You should always do what rewards you inside; to make the sounds you wanted to play in the first place.
I Personally; am just not in that C6 mode anymore. Heck; I cut a whole Dale Watson Swing CD on just the C6th; and loved every minute of it.>but I don't have that passion at this time.
Ricky

Benton Allen wrote:
My friend, James, is correct when he says thay are heavey, but just for accuracy's sake, the Crossover frame is not cast iron. It is cast aluminum and weighs 10 lbs.
Cheers!
Benton

Awe yes Benton, a slip of the tongue, mate. I edited my post. It's aluminum cast frame ads 10 lbs or so to an already "big" guitar.

Pedal guitar gigs are on a single neck E9. Non-pedal gigs are on A6, C6, E13.

Drew Howard wrote:Pedal guitar gigs are on a single neck E9. Non-pedal gigs are on A6, C6, E13.

Really???

James Morehead wrote:

Drew Howard wrote:Pedal guitar gigs are on a single neck E9. Non-pedal gigs are on A6, C6, E13.

Really???

I -think- he means that is what he uses in those situations...

James make sure you have taken your blood pressure medicine before you say REALLY. You know what the doctor said.

Jimmie Martin wrote:James make sure you have taken your blood pressure medicine before you say REALLY. You know what the doctor said.

The Dr. says I ain't got any bloop pressure.
I guess its the non pedal part that makes me wonder where all the unused pedals are. I'd buy them if they were shobud wide pedals!!

Now thats an idea James you could make a living off of selling the wide pedals.

Fred Glave wrote:If you check out the "For Sale: Instruments" section of the forum, I find it hard to find a S-10 steel. Occasionally I see a SD-10, but there sure are a lot of D-10's available, and there are a lot of sales made there too. What does this mean?

Well, for one thing, there have been far more D10s made, so it stands to reason there'd be more of them on the used market. (The single-neck steel didn't really get popular until the '70s. Before that, if you were a pro, you almost definitely played a double neck guitar.) Also, single necks are cheaper, simpler, and more popular as "learner" guitars, so most of them get snapped up pretty quick.

I'd guess that in another decade or so, the situation will change, and the used matket will then offer an equal amount of single neck guitars.

Jimmie Martin wrote:I had a guy told me that no one wants to learn the c-6th anymore. He says that the rack and barrel Sho-Bud's aren't any good because the barrels come loose a lot while playing.

Well Jimmie, I think this guy is out of touch, and somewhat full of hot air. Even if SD-10s are selling 2:1 over D-10s, that's still a lot of D-10s.

Granted, guys on here who say that you can do it all on E9 do have good reasons for saying so. I find that when I use one more finger pick and split grips, I can find basically every chord on the E9 that is found on C6, except for what happens on the bottom two or three strings. There are, however, some drawbacks with chord-to-chord transitions that way. I think all players need to decide for themselves which is the best way to go.

As for rack and barrel tuners, they hold great but you have to know what you are doing. The barrel has to be threaded in the right amount — not too much, not too little — in order to hold and to tune well. You'll get negative testimony on all kinds of worthy things from people who merely weren't good practitioners, and barrel tuners are no exception. That goes for push/pulls too.

I don't understand why my earlier suggestion of a U-12 is so casually dismissed. With the E's lowered on the RKR, I have the relatively identical tuning, 5 B6 pedals and a couple of relevant knee levers, and a free left leg. For all the guys who say they've just got to cover 5 tunes a night, why is this not the obvious solution? (Not to mention the great benefits of actually blending the two styles with a U-12...)

Bob, I don't think your U-12 suggestion was casually dismissed at all. Herb (IMO correctly) replied that D-10 E9/C6 and U-12 E9/B6 are not the same, and I agree.

I have both, and I imagine it's fine to learn 6th-style playing on either. But I'm finding it easier on C6 - holding the E=>Eb lever in is not a huge deal, and one can even invoke a lever-lock - but somehow it seems more natural to learn it old-school on a separate C6 neck, for which the nominal tuning is a 6th. I use the universal a lot, it's a great tuning, but I don't think it's a substitute for C6. My mindset is really quite different working on each.

Maybe as I develop more, it will become more natural to play 6th style on U-12. But there are limitations when really going for the old-school 6th style - one knee is used to maintain the tuning, which precludes using it for other lever changes, and holding the knee in makes it harder (I don't say impossible) to work the pedals with that leg - this is why many universal players put E=>Eb on the right knee, but one faces the same issue if one wants to use both feet on the pedals. Add to that the fact that an advanced C6th player will probably have an issue putting a large number of levers on a single neck. One can, of course, use the lever-lock, which is routinely frowned upon by universal advocates, but I think is a reasonable choice in certain situations. No doubt, there are also some high-tech steels (the Excel comes to mind) with massively capable changers that can handle very complex setups. I guess I don't want to go that way - if I go to a very complex setup, I'd rather have levers separated onto two separate necks - for me, I think it's more of a pedal-lever feel thing.

I think that, in principle, one can take any one of the standard tunings and learn to play tons of music on it - probably more than I'll ever have a chance to do. But I'm also pretty amazed at how certain small differences can channel one in different directions. Perhaps one approach or another fits better cognitively to the way a player thinks already, and it's just a matter of making a cognitive map to a different approach. But perhaps there is something physical that different people react to differently. Or perhaps it's some of both. I formally made the cognitive map between various tunings in my mind, but still find certain approaches more natural for me than others, and still don't exactly know why.

Whatever the result of all of this - I just don't see any major 'trend' of moving away from D-10 pedal steels to single necks of whatever form, at least on this forum. D-10s seem to sell well, and seem to sell for a significant premium over a comparable U-12 or SD/S-10. This thread started out when a poster who is trying to sell an old rack and barrel D-10 Sho Bud was told by a steel guitar horse-trader that D-10s are going out because 'nobody wants to learn C6th anymore' and that 'rack and barrels aren't any good'. My take is that I would examine the possible motives for such a statement before trying to assess its credibility, as stated in my earlier post on the first page.

Thanks for the response Dave.

Donny Hinson wrote:The single-neck steel didn't really get popular until the '70s. Before that, if you were a pro, you almost definitely played a double neck guitar.

Before then, most mechanisms weren't advanced enough to support all of the pulls necessary to play every style on one neck. Those advances started in the late 60's. By the end of the 70's the major builders were offering S-12 configurations with 8+5. Tunable splits were starting to appear. Suddenly anything seemed possible.

Today, it's not uncommon to see an S-10 on stage with a big name touring act. For lead steel, you rarely need notes lower than the E9th range, and the now-accepted 4+5 configuration has a lot of stylistic range. Moreover, most popular music today doesn't expect full, low root jazz chords from the steel.

For most of his recording career, Lloyd Green has played an S-10. His recording of Hank Williams You Wrote My Life (Moe Bandy) was what convinced me to play a single neck E9th for the next 20 years. No bandleader ever complained about the way I played western swing tunes. All of the 6ths, 9ths, diminished and augmented chords used in popular western swing are easily available on E9th.*

For a utility man, the S-10 is sufficient. When he wants jazz, rock or low notes, he switches to guitar. Those of us who play steel exclusively don't really have that option, though. We need a D-10 or S-12 if we want lower, jazzy voicings or blues/rock power chords in addition to the commercial E9th sounds.

Plus a lot of us just plain like playing C6th. That's what will keep the D-10 viable for a very long time.

*Note that while I was playing an S-12 E9th, I didn't really use the two low strings for swing chords. I used them for rhythm parts.

Bob Simons, I tried moving to U12, and gave it 3 years. It never felt natural to me, the way the E9, or the C6 necks felt. When I went back to D-10, everyone in the band took immediate notice of the improvement of my playing. I think if I were younger, the U12 would probably be a good thing. It sure looks good on paper! the other thing is that I never liked the close, tight string spacing on the U12. I know that these days they make them with wider spacing, but I can't afford a brand new steel anyway.

My guitar is an SD-10, E9th in front, and a pad on the rear.

There have been times when I've thought about just going ahead and putting a pad on the front as well.

I got my first d-10 in july and I love having the two necks. You get a whole new shelf of licks and ideas that I can't imagine a u-12 could do. I began playing psg with an A6 tuning too, so a lot of sounds that I had to ditch when I went to a single E9, I can do again and more with C6. + it's a good tuning for getting people to dance.

Brett Lanier wrote:...C6. + it's a good tuning for getting people to dance.

'Nuff said!

I hope not, I just bought my first PSG and it's a GFI D10.