The Steel Guitar Forum

Don't want to get too far from my question, but the market here in STL for country is not good enough to support the 4-5 mainstream country bands in this town. You can't be a six peice band, hire out sound, and expect to come home with $100 in your pocket at the end of the night on a consistant basis.

Therefore it looks like i might be taking my steel skills in the direction of classic rock/ blues to give that flavor of a cool instrumentation in a 4 peice band.

My delimma is that I have a Derby that was originally an SD-10 E9th but had a C6th non-pedal neck added on after the fact.

I have only been playing steel for two years so I don't know if I'm ready to get rid of my E9th tuning and forget all together to pursue an E7th tuning.

If I have to I have to, but does anyone have any ideas on how to incorporate 10 strings on the non-pedal neck in a way that I could get some of that sacred steel sound? I am mostly going to use it for leads but some rhythm capabilities would be nice.

Steve, I would take a look at Dan Tyack's hybrid E9th/sacred steel tuning. I have this on my 10 string steel and it has it all.

<font face="monospace" size="3"><pre>
notes P1 P2 P3 P4 LKL LKV LKR RKL RKR
F# ++G#
D# -D-C# +E
G# +A
E ++F# +F -D#
B ++C#' ++C# --A -A#
G# +A --F#
F# --E
E +F --D -D#
B ++C# --A -A#
E
</pre></font>

Karlis