The Steel Guitar Forum

I am about to buy my first steel and its a great deal but is a twelve string MSA E9. Any suggestions for string sets. It has been suggested that while learning I should just take off the bottom two. Thoughts on this?

Nope. String it up and learn to play it. Most of the instructional materials will only be for the top ten, but the other two are worth learning, and you'll learn how to add them on your own. Live Steel Strings has a few extended E9th sets, and I'd recommend a plain 6th. That does make a difference.

I agree with Lane.Leave them on.

The low G# string will do the same thing the other G# strings do. And the low E string will provide a bass note for the E chord.

Here's a tip you'll find useful in the future. The combination of A pedal, and the the knee lever that raises the E strings to F, gives you a C# chord. So, if you add an extra change on the E to F raise that lowers the 12th string to C#, you will have a bass note for that chord.

As a newbie, you won't need that for a while. But when the time comes when you learn how to use the change, you'll be glad you have it.

I'll second Mike's suggestion, and also add that, if one of your knees lowers 6 to F#, it should also drop 11 as well.
BUT if your guitar lacks either change that we mentioned, ignore its absence.
I'm a firm believer that, unless your guitar is wildly non-standard learn on what you have.
In a year or two, once this thing has stopped being mind-twisting and you know what you're missing, THEN you can make changes.

Thanks for all the advice, seems like a consensus, the low strings stay. My dear departed friend Jim Peters swore by this site and I concur, what a great supportive community, but I guess when you are playing an instrument that is harder than chewing gum while skipping rope, patting your belly and rubbing your head simultaneously, you gonna need friends!

One more question (for now) which strings, if any are more prone to breaking so I can stock up. That's all for now, thanks again!

I suggest a 46 gauge for the 11th string, and a 60 for the 12th.

Thanks for the input. I went to the string site and see that I can pretty much assemble any set I want. So here is the question, nickle or stainless? I am hard on my guitar strings and use elixers on all my acoustics because they are more resistant to sweat. my tele of choice gets changed pretty frequently for the same reason.

Richard Dempsey wrote: So here is the question, nickle or stainless?

We can't answer that Richard. Like so many other aspects of the steel, this is a matter of personal preference. The only advise we can give is to try them both and see which you like more.

For what it's worth, I have 2 identical steels, MSA Millenniums. I put nickle strings on one and stainless on the other, so I could compare them. They are far more similar than you'd expect. On a scale of one to 100, one is a 99 and the other is a 101. The stainless is a tad brighter, the nickle a tiny bit more mellow. But the only way to tell the difference is to set the 2 steels side by side and alternate between them, using the same pickup, volume pedal and amp settings. If I only heard one, I would not be able to tell which one I was listening to.

Thanks, I figured SS might be brighter. Do they tend to last longer, corrode slower? (That would be my guess.)

Richard,
I have a Carter Uni and have been using "Live Steel" strings since April 013. Did try stainless but now use only nickle. There was a definite difference on my guitar. I have only broken one string since using "live Steel".That was the 5th string B. Best string separation I have ever heard.