E9 Tuning and String Gauge Sequence

[Ransom Beers]

"A long time ago, I had a very well respected country guitar player here locally, who had never worked with a steel guitar player, strum across my neck , walk over, pick up his tuner and hand it to me, and tell me there was a serious problem with my tuner and I should use his because my guitar sounded like "S#!T". I honestly don't think he knew it was supposed to be tuned that way."


Being a well known player & being a well educated player are two colors of horses a$$'s !!

Knowing music & what "IS" music will make even the less known player a better player.JMHO

[Allan Thompson]

I'm pretty sure Ronnie Symank the TSGA player of the year tunes his top strings in the order you are talking about. Great player.

[Donny Hinson]

The WAY COOL thing about the Pedal Steel Guitar is you can set it up any way you want to!

Sure, and you can do the same with almost any stringed instrument. A good example is that some players do use different (slack-key) tunings for guitar. But in the end, whenever you run across a tuning that is used by thousands and thousands of players, it's pretty safe to say it's a very logical and practical tuning.

When I used to teach E9th, I found that players would learn far quicker if I told them to consider it as an 8+2 string tuning, rather than a 10 string tuning. Realizing that most of their playing would be done on strings 3 through 10 somehow made it far easier to comprehend.

[Brad Bechtel]

In my humble attempts to play pedal steel, I've pretty much stayed away from the top two ("scary") strings until I felt better about playing the other eight properly. I do note that the high D# and F# combine with the B string to make a V chord in the I position.