The Steel Guitar Forum

How many of you steeler use the G6th tuning. Because I switch back and forth between my dobro and steel... It confused my ?brain when I played C6th. Soooo I put G6th on all my steels.Now when I swich I dont have to think of positions. Just curious.... If you play G6th what string guages do you use.??? Lee

Lee Gillespie wrote:How many of you steeler use the G6th tuning. Because I switch back and forth between my dobro and steel... It confused my ?brain when I played C6th. Soooo I put G6th on all my steels.Now when I swich I dont have to think of positions. Just curious.... If you play G6th what string guages do you use.??? Lee

Are you just tuning the A up to B, for E B D G B E ?

I don't use G6 but years of playing standard guitar and dobro seemed to make C6 a strange transition.... I prefer A6. Luckily for me, when I started learning steel guitar Rick Alexander was sharing a lot of great A6 material here on the forum. I learned to play from him and his courses with Herb Remington. A6 is a great tuning if you like to navigate from standard guitar positions.
Sorry for the slight topic drift.

I have used G6 for many years, though not exclusively, because I started as a dobro player and it was natural for me. The E aspects of G6/Em7 are great for Rockabilly and Blues. When I want the A6 orientation I use my Beard or Charlie’s capo, which handle 8 strings beautifully. I have it on my Fender Dual Professional along with E13. My strings are .059, 054, 046, 036, 030, 026, 018, 016.

Dean Gray wrote:I don't use G6 but years of playing standard guitar and dobro seemed to make C6 a strange transition.... I prefer A6.

I have used A6 as my main playing tuning for some decades now, but at one point I was using G6;

L-H: B D E G B D

It was easy to tune up a step to A6.

I learned on the A tuning so I even tune my dobros to that tuning.
Erv

Hey guys thanks for the comeback...my G6th tuning is (high to low) D B G E D B G The bottom string sometime E or F. Its interesting about the A tuning used by so many. I have a Beard Gold tone 8 string...Tuned to G6 also..Gives some songs a interesting different dobro sound. Lee

Hi Lee I use G6 on my dobro and lap steel too, tuning high to low E,B,G,D,G,E with the 6th string (usually the lowest) being strung and tuned a step above the D string, using a 32" gauge. This gives me a 6th sound when needed, but a 'strummable' open chord too..as well as full minor/minor 7ths etc. I've been transcribing the Joaquin Murphey book in C6 to this tuning..opening up alot of grips and licks.

Just tuning the 1st string to D of course opens up trad dobro licks as well.

All the best,
Joel

Hi Lee, My 7-string tuning G6/ C7. I use a SIT brand C6 string set plus a .013 Hi G string.
G - .013
D - .015
B - .018
G - .024w
E - .030w
C - .036w
Bb - .022 re-entrant, or .042w

Jerry Wagner wrote:Hi Lee, My 7-string tuning G6/ C7. I use a SIT brand C6 string set plus a .013 Hi G string.
G - .013
D - .015
B - .018
G - .024w
E - .030w
C - .036w
Bb - .022 re-entrant, or .042w

That’s a cool tuning.
You’ve got adjacent strings for straight bar strums in
C major
C7
CM7
Em
Em7
G major
G6

And those are just the available “basic” chords.

Hi Allan,
Here's a map showing some of what's going on with this tuning. Some players prefer A6 to C6 tuning because of string tone. I like the string tone with this tuning. But that depends a lot on scale length too. I'm building a guitar with benders on the D & B strings. With both benders down the tuning is Hi to Lo: G,E,C,G,E,C,Bb.

Hi Lee...when I received my 8 string lap I also wanted to stick with my dobro G tuning. I initially tried (low to high) GBDEGBDG then EGBDEGBD then a couple of other variants. I finally ended stringing it up to just seven strings GBDEGBD. Now that the guitar is tired of me moving strings around and unwinding and rewinding, I think I will move over to some variants of C6. This is too much fun.

I'm also a G6 guy (l-h EGBDEGBD) on my 8 string reso and my main, gigging 8 string lap - hey, remember gigs? I really like the low notes and chords available in G6. I'm in a Guitar-Bass-Steel trio, so I often find myself using that lower range for covering some rhythm guitar type space.

I’ve been using G9 or G7, playing mostly blues.
G9, GBDFAD, I build my minor chords starting from the D minor.
G9 (7 string gGBDFAD reentrant g)
G7, fGDGBD (reentrant f)
G7 (7 string fGBDGBD), build my minor chords on 1-3 dyads, starting from B-D.

EDIT: new 6 string variation
Gsus9 gGDFAD, Power chords for blues/rock on bottom 4 strings, minor chords on top 4 strings

I guess in some ways G6 (GBDEGBD) makes more sense for the available minor chords, but the “6” chords kinda just flop in blues.

Allan. with an 8th string you can add the flat 7th which gives you your choice of dominant 7th or (with the higher 6th) 13th. Works great for blues in my opinion.

I suppose you could also simply tune your E's up to F for blues, but I don't think I've done that.

Mike Harris wrote:
I suppose you could also simply tune your E's up to F for blues, but I don't think I've done that.

I used to pull the 6ths up to the b7 behind the bar as needed.

These G6 tunings are great. I’ve used stuff like this on the fly to play slide guitar.
A cool thing would be a reentrant string 1, an E, F# or F as needed.

I also have thought of this as a basis for a simple pedal steel tuning.
John

Here is a guy killing Little Wing, and I think he’s in a G6/Eminor tuning.
https://youtu.be/XvKbbDBeBNo
J