The Steel Guitar Forum

Is it time to choose just one neck, with a single tuning? Rather than trying to combine 2 neck tuning into 1 (E9th + C6th) Why can't one tuning be 2? Will the younger players and musicians not yet playing the instrument really want to get their heads around an E9th & C6th. Is the instrument going to just Survive… Die… Explode… or just Evolve... Admittedly, 2 tunings are more 'flexible' than 1. But 3 are more flexible than 2. Where does it end? I think it is the mechanical limitations? What do you think ???

Art - I think unless someone comes up with a really different instrument altoghether, The "standard" tunings are here to stay, at least for awhile.
There will always be folks experimenting with tunings however, looks like most folks who want to learn pedal steel, are going to gravitate towards E9, cause thats just the most common. Theres' always the exception to the rule

Yeah Bud.

I think the D-10 is probably here to stay, even though the E9/B6 or B6/E9 uni can give you both (with a compromise needed for the D string).
Totally off-the-wall tunings will also likely always be around, but not gain traction, because people LIKE trading ideas, and bouncing ideas off one another grows the music.

I think I could play just about anything if I added a high E and a low D to my 8-string D6th. Steel players are the only ones who notice that I don't have 10 strings. The audience just hears "pedal steel". The arcane differences in copedents are totally irrelevant to them.

I'm with you ode chap. I will say this though, buddy Emmons along with many other players spent thousands of hours analyzing tunings etc and he has saved us many hours of experimentation. I like to think of the E9 is the home base and expand upon that in the lower register....

Maybe by taking the 10th string and making it the 9th string, pulling the D with a lever, and making the 10th a low g# blah blah... I'm terrified myself personally, of twiddling with the upper strings, if I was cutting trails like Franklin I would do anything I like, but as I'm following trails Franklin and many others cut, it's hard to stray and reinvent the steel .

After saying all that, there are loads and loads different ways to experiment with your tunings, we don't have to play commercial!

On the E9/B6 uni, what we call B6 is really E9 with a major 7th (until you flatten it). What we call E9 has both a minor and a major 7th. So wherever your Ds are at any given moment, you're in some kind of E9 (which also fits with other guitars).

That's as close to one tuning as we'll ever be and I don't see any reason to abandon it. IMHO. Number of strings? Please yourself. And mark what Larry says about the pioneers.

B0b, where can I get a look at your copedant? Thanks.

Okay, I got it. Duh.

I think the "out-of-order" strings are the single biggest turnoff for prospective players coming from anything else, and b0b, Zane King, Daniel Lanois (I think) and many, many others are dumping them. There is apparently a junior explosion of six-string pedal steels, and the top two strings are the first casualties. There actually might erupt some simmering "six-vs-ten string" border disputes - the "real" steel guitarists who know 7,000 variants of the pulls into and out-of unison, vs. the ones who merely get paid to make 3 or 4 steely-type noises....