The Steel Guitar Forum

Hi. Appreciate this is a real primitive idea - kinda following on from DB's thread on the 8 string E9 ideas. It's for a "fun" project to set up a guitar for slide with a couple of palm pedals.

At the moment, I'm thinking...

1 F#
2 G# (+A)
3 E
4 B (+C#)
5 G#
6 E

So I've sort of got A and B pedal although not on both G#s. I'm also hoping, from my limited steel playing ability that the top F# will come in handy instead of just going for a straight open tuning and having the A and B pedals on the 2nd and 3rd strings.

Any comments / ideas, much appreciated - thanks guys.<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Rob Jackson on 18 May 2005 at 07:37 AM.]</p></FONT><font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Rob Jackson on 18 May 2005 at 07:59 AM.]</p></FONT>

What's the scale length? You might have a hard time tuning a high G# and raising it to A on a standard guitar.

It's a telecaster. I was going to try a 9 on that string and hope for the best!

Do you also play standard guitar and are you planning on playing rock and blues with this guitar?

Yeah, you're right. the more I think about it, the more I think that 2nd string is gonna ping! How about a D9 type tuning instead? I've added the string sizes that I think might work:

<font face="monospace" size="3"><pre>
A B
------------------
1 10 E
2 09 F# +G
3 11 D
4 14 A +B
5 16 F#
6 24 D
</pre></font>

I do play standard guitar, but tuned non-standard if that makes sense?! I tune it EBEABE and have a wholenote raise on the top B via a palm lever.

I also play a 3 pedal / 1 knee 10 string E9 steel very badly!

Genre-wise, it's coutry-ish stuff. Alt.country, I guess you'd call it, whatever that is
www.the-low-country.com

Hey Rob,
I have an Ibanez Artist solid body tuned to E9th with a set of Bigsby Palm Pedals. It's currently set up like this:
<font face="monospace" size="3"><pre>
P1 P2
E
B C#
G# A
F#
E
D
</pre></font>
As you look at the guitar, P1 is the lever closest to the wound strings and P2 is the closest to the unwound strings. The gauges I use are 1-.011 2-.014 3-.018P 4-.24W 5-.026 6-.028 I could probably do a little heavier on the gauges of the wound strings but I like to experiment with tuning them to different notes from time to time....JH in Va.

------------------
Livin' in the Past and Future with a 12 string Mooney Universal tuning.

I'd do it in C, and use heavier gauges:
<font face="monospace" size="3"><pre> L1 L2
------------------
1 .014 D
2 .012 E +F
3 .016 C
4 .018 G +A
5 .026 E
6 .034 C </pre></font>

1 F#
2 G# (+A)
3 E ( --D)
4 B (+C#)
5 G# (- G)
6 E

If that's all I had I could be pretty happy.

Thanks for all the ideas guys - really appreciate it. Looks like most of you are suggesting A and B pedal type raises on strings 2 and 4, with the 9th "chromatic" on the 1st string. I can just about get my head round that from the little I've learned playing beginners E9 steel. I also like the idea of going down to C and using beefier strings so thanks for that idea Bobby.

Hopefully I'll be able to start building the guitar in the next few weeks. Thanks for all the ideas.

For high notes, you might like this G major tuning: <font face="monospace" size="3"><pre> L1 L2
------------------
1 .010 G
2 .014 D +E
3 .017 B +C
4 .024 G
5 .032 D
6 .050 G </pre></font>