New Lap Steel Player - Tuning Question

[richb]

I play guitar in a duo. I just bought a 6 string Lap Steel with the idea of playing it to add a new sound and maybe some variety to our duo's over-all sound. ( Break up to monotony of two guitars). We play a variety of Pop, Rock, and modern Country in our set. I envision perhaps playing the Lap in a song, that doesn't even have lap in it's original arrangement, and, I don't anticipate being a bona fide LS Player. I simply want to play some simple fills, and chord accompaniment to our set. Having said that, what LS tuning might be the easiest for me to grasp, and meet my very general needs? Open D, Open G, Open E, C6, something else? Thanks for any advise.

[Bob Womack]

I've found Open E and Open E minor to be most useful in studio work. From those two, if a melody of figure is hard to make work, I'll just detune or uptune a string by a half-step to make things easier if necessary.

Bob

[bagpipe]

My simplistic approach is that if I want a "blues-ier" type sound I use open E tuning. For the traditional "country sounding" lap steel I use C6 tuning. But, to me, C6 requires more work and I struggle to play in that tuning on the fly. With the open E tuning, you're always at least hitting an open chord with the slide. Not so with the open C6.

[FolkRock Rules]

Originally Posted by richb

I just bought a 6 string Lap Steel with the idea of playing it to add a new sound and maybe some variety to our duo's over-all sound.

What kind did you get?

I bought an SX Lap 2 (the one with the P90 pickup), and I keep that one in C6 because that tuning seemed to have the most instructional materials available. (Doug Beaumier, Joe Dochtermann, and Andy Volk are three of my favorite authors/teachers.)

I've got an old Squier Bullet Special (single HB) that had rather high action, so I tuned it to Open E and put a Stew-Mac steel nut extension on it. That was inspired by this Juzzie Smith video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjSijEE4KuQ

Toward the end of the song, when he plays the cajon with his right hand, he can use just the bar to make the guitar chords ring out.

[richb]

Originally Posted by FolkRock Rules

What kind did you get?

I bought an SX Lap 2 (the one with the P90 pickup), and I keep that one in C6 because that tuning seemed to have the most instructional materials available. (Doug Beaumier, Joe Dochtermann, and Andy Volk are three of my favorite authors/teachers.)

I've got an old Squier Bullet Special (single HB) that had rather high action, so I tuned it to Open E and put a Stew-Mac steel nut extension on it. That was inspired by this Juzzie Smith video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjSijEE4KuQ

Toward the end of the song, when he plays the cajon with his right hand, he can use just the bar to make the guitar chords ring out.

Since I'm new to Lap Steel's, I did not what to spend a lot of money, so I went with the Hadean Labradoodle DLX 2TS Lap Steel. Here is the link..

http://www.rondomusic.com/product8034.html

I too, wanted something with P90's and also an adjustable Bridge to help with intonation. And the price was right. We'll see how she sounds. How do you like your SX Lap 2?

[FolkRock Rules]

Originally Posted by richb

Since I'm new to Lap Steel's, I did not what to spend a lot of money, so I went with the Hadean Labradoodle DLX 2TS Lap Steel. Here is the link..

That was my thinking, too. I looked at the Rogue RLS-1 as well as some used ones on eBay, but then went with the Lap 2 because it got pretty good reviews in spite of its low price.
The Hadean looks interesting.

I too, wanted something with P90's and also an adjustable Bridge to help with intonation. And the price was right. We'll see how she sounds. How do you like your SX Lap 2?

It's pretty good. I'm not sure just why I picked the Lap 2 over a Lap 1 (mahogany body, single coil pup), other than maybe Joe Dochtermann's recommendation of it. (He plays one in his YouTube lesson on "Sleep Walk"/"Sleepwalk.") I think it was in an email to me that Joe said something about "they make baseball bats out of ash, so you know it's rugged." The Lap 2 looks kinda like a bat, but it sounds way better.

I have a lot of learning yet to do on it.

[Rudy4]

Originally Posted by richb

I play guitar in a duo. I just bought a 6 string Lap Steel with the idea of playing it to add a new sound and maybe some variety to our duo's over-all sound. ( Break up to monotony of two guitars). We play a variety of Pop, Rock, and modern Country in our set. I envision perhaps playing the Lap in a song, that doesn't even have lap in it's original arrangement, and, I don't anticipate being a bona fide LS Player. I simply want to play some simple fills, and chord accompaniment to our set. Having said that, what LS tuning might be the easiest for me to grasp, and meet my very general needs? Open D, Open G, Open E, C6, something else? Thanks for any advise.

See "String Selection and Tunings" here:

http://www.bluestemstrings.com/page5.html

[richb]

Thanks everyone for the advice and info. I appreciate it.

[MikeBmusic]

Originally Posted by FolkRock Rules

What kind did you get?

I bought an SX Lap 2 (the one with the P90 pickup), and I keep that one in C6 because that tuning seemed to have the most instructional materials available. (Doug Beaumier, Joe Dochtermann, and Andy Volk are three of my favorite authors/teachers.)

I've got an old Squier Bullet Special (single HB) that had rather high action, so I tuned it to Open E and put a Stew-Mac steel nut extension on it. That was inspired by this Juzzie Smith video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjSijEE4KuQ

Toward the end of the song, when he plays the cajon with his right hand, he can use just the bar to make the guitar chords ring out.

How steady are the legs on the SX?

[FolkRock Rules]

Originally Posted by MikeBmusic

How steady are the legs on the SX?

I haven't used the ones that came with mine, but I've read that some care is required when threading the legs into the parts on the body.

I think if I ever played mine on a stand, it would be if I could get one of the LGS 50 stands from Rondo. Those have been out of stock for awhile, but Kurt at Rondo told me "SX has stopped making the older style lap stand, but we may be able to get them to build one more batch as we had a number of customers asking. Will post on our web site if that happens." I know there's at least one other guy on the Steel Guitar Forum who's been looking for one.
http://www.rondomusic.com/lgs50.html

[kydave]

Originally Posted by richb

I play guitar in a duo. I just bought a 6 string Lap Steel with the idea of playing it to add a new sound and maybe some variety to our duo's over-all sound. ( Break up to monotony of two guitars). We play a variety of Pop, Rock, and modern Country in our set. I envision perhaps playing the Lap in a song, that doesn't even have lap in it's original arrangement, and, I don't anticipate being a bona fide LS Player. I simply want to play some simple fills, and chord accompaniment to our set. Having said that, what LS tuning might be the easiest for me to grasp, and meet my very general needs? Open D, Open G, Open E, C6, something else? Thanks for any advise.

I found open G, like I use on my Dobro (GBDGBD) very user friendly on some lap steels I've had and was too lazy to learn another tuning.

You very likely will find you'll want heavier strings that what came on the guitar.

I've played pop and blues, as well as country, using that tuning.

One of those keyboard stands works just fine, too.

Doesn't show that great, but here when I was first playing music in SF with the Blue Lamp's house band "Pimp Daddy Jesus", I switched back & forth with my '73 Strat and '51 National/Supro lap steel. I kept in on the keyboard stand. (What a GREAT dive blues bar that place was!!)

[Aaron Smith]

I find C6 to be most versatile because it gives you access to a major triad on the top strings and a minor triad on the bottom strings, so you can play over pretty much any chord out there without using bar slants. However, it sounds very happy/Hawaiian if you play all the strings together, so if you're playing blues you need to use a lot of restraint. Other than C6, I prefer Spanish G (DGDGBD).

[815C]

I use open E (E B E G# B E), A (E A E A C# E), and C6 (C E G A C E). But I use different string gauges for the C6 tuning (36w, 30w, 26, 20, 17, 15).

[Crash-VR]

Originally Posted by richb

I play guitar in a duo. I just bought a 6 string Lap Steel with the idea of playing it to add a new sound and maybe some variety to our duo's over-all sound. ( Break up to monotony of two guitars). We play a variety of Pop, Rock, and modern Country in our set. I envision perhaps playing the Lap in a song, that doesn't even have lap in it's original arrangement, and, I don't anticipate being a bona fide LS Player. I simply want to play some simple fills, and chord accompaniment to our set. Having said that, what LS tuning might be the easiest for me to grasp, and meet my very general needs? Open D, Open G, Open E, C6, something else? Thanks for any advise.

I recently did the same thing. Open D was easy to learn and fairly standard. DADF#AD with that many octaves it's really not too difficult and you can really dig into the low E which you would miss if it was tuned higher.

[kydave]

Rich,

I'm really glad you brought this up. I got rid of all my good old vintage steels during a year of unemployment a decade ago. But I bought one of those Rogues, which has been sitting up in top of the closet for a while now.

The thought of relearning steel in a new tuning, C6th, got me to looking around. I'm now looking forward to being able to play something similar to this primo example one of these days...

Cindy Cashdollar (of Asleep At The Wheel fame to me) and Rose Sinclair ripping it up!!