# Alright people, lets talk about lapsteel tunings?



## puckhead (Sep 8, 2008)

We tend to play Stones (nice slide work on Sister Morphine, for example), Neil Young, etc.
as a side note, hopefully very soon I will be able to make a posting in the Vintage section 

so, what is the tuning you would recommend for me?
I have seen suggestions of open E, G or D, and so far the most interesting tuning I have seen is C6 (C chord on lower 3 strings, Am on the top 3 strings).


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## fraser (Feb 24, 2007)

no idea on the stones or neil young,
but im really big on gm and dm, as well as straight up g and d.
not sure how the minor tunings translate in a band setting tho-
one of the reasons i use them is how great they sound unaccompanied.
its like the minor tunings help in setting a mood- a big advantage when playing solo, at least to me.


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## six-string (Oct 7, 2009)

i didn't even know you could tune a lap steel?.
i thought they were like banjos and just played in random tuning.
......joe king.


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## 2manyGuitars (Jul 6, 2009)

Just got back from a weekly jam and took along my Rickenbacher Silver Hawaiian for the first time. Sat in on a few songs using open G (the songs were in various major and minor keys) and it seemed to work well for most stuff. I've just started fooling around with C6 but I'm not good enough yet to explore the full potential of it.


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## Mooh (Mar 7, 2007)

I like open G as a kind of default tuning for lapsteel, but sometimes there's benefits to other tunings and open Dm or Em work for me. However I rarely use anything other than open G live simply because of the retuning hassle. I like the C6 tuning but I've been lazy about using it lately.

Peace, Mooh.


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## Milkman (Feb 2, 2006)

Mooh said:


> I like open G as a kind of default tuning for lapsteel, but sometimes there's benefits to other tunings and open Dm or Em work for me. However I rarely use anything other than open G live simply because of the retuning hassle. I like the C6 tuning but I've been lazy about using it lately.
> 
> Peace, Mooh.


Me too.

Open G works for most things.


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## bagpipe (Sep 19, 2006)

I stick to open E on my lapsteel and my slide guitar. Drop down to Em if I want gloomy and depressing. C6 seems to be very versatile, but I think it would take a lot of playing it exclusively to get to the point where I could solo in it. It's also no good whatsoever for most of the classic blues or rock slide stuff.


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## hollowbody (Jan 15, 2008)

I dabbled in C6 for a while, but yeah, like bagpipe said, it would require a large investment of my time to get it up to snuff and I'm much more comfortable in Open G anyway. Plus, I hardly ever play lap-steel, so it doesn't make sense to spend tons of time trying to master a new tuning.


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## bagpipe (Sep 19, 2006)

I had to search for this - I haven't seen in a while. To me, this is classic Lap Steel playing in C6. Check out the fluent bar slants he pulls off too. That's years of practise right there:

[YOUTUBE]ELiPYTWUIFQ[/YOUTUBE]


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## puckhead (Sep 8, 2008)

bagpipe said:


> I stick to open E on my lapsteel and my slide guitar. Drop down to Em if I want gloomy and depressing. C6 seems to be very versatile, but I think it would take a lot of playing it exclusively to get to the point where I could solo in it. *It's also no good whatsoever for most of the classic blues or rock slide stuff*.


thanks. i think that's the magic words that I was looking for.
I'll start out in G, then


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