My latest lap steel tuning

[Dave-M]

Let me first point out that I am a novice at playing C6, or any other tuning, so what do I know! I frequently put my neck on the chopping block with many of my posts, but here goes!

I had my 8-string lap steel tuned to C13, high to low (E,C,A,G,E,C,A,F) (3,1,6,5,3,1,6,4) to play stuff from the Don Helms’ book “Your Cheatin’ Heart”, but never got much use out of the lower two strings. They sounded very muddy and weird, and not intuitive as I fumbled around with them.

I also tried (E,C,A,G,E,C,A#,G) (3,1,6,5,3,1,7b,5) and that was a bit better, allowing dominant sevenths.

I tried C6 high, with a 5 on top, and everything shuffled down. (Actually it was A6 so I didn’t have to change strings), but did not get much use out of the top 5, which can also be found 3 frets right of root on string 2 (string 1 on the C6 low). Additionally, it put me off track playing Don Helms’ tab by confusing me as to which strings to use if I didn’t stay alert.

Now I have retuned it as (E,C,A,G,E,C,G,E) (3,1,6,5,3,1,5,3) [gauges 14,17,20,24,30,349,47,58] and I like it a lot. The bottom five strings are now tuned like a 5,3,1,5,3,(1) Dobro, and the top six like C6 low. Now my low 1,5,3 chord, used frequently to terminate a tune, is on the bottom three strings at root, which is very handy in my opinion.

Now I can (attempt to) play Helms’ stuff on the top six strings, and the D,B,G,D,B (normally open-G tuning) stuff at fret 7.

I know the pro’s will raise an eyebrow, but it works for me!

[azureskys]

Hi Dave , if it works for you then tune it like you like , i seen on the net that someone has a C tuning for ten string pedal steel and after reading the article it makes a lot of sense to me , i plan on trying it one day . Russ