posted 20 March 2001 06:56 AM         

You might want to consider going to a Universal E9th/Bb6th 12 string pedal guitar. This provides you with the best of 2 worlds all on one neck.

posted 20 March 2001 07:38 AM         

All My Ex's - George Strait
Ace In The Hole - George Strait
Long Neck Bottle - Garth Brooks
Burnin' The Roadhouse Down - Garth Brooks and Steve Wariner
Married To A Waitress - Alan Jackson - the SECOND steel solo, toward the end of the song
Oklahoma Swing - Vince Gill (w/Reba Mcintire)
A World Of Blue - Dwight Yoakam
Most anything by Ernest Tubb and the Texas Troubadors

Of course, you can pick up steel guitar CD's by players like Jernigan, Emmons, Chalker, etc. and hear plenty of it, but it's hard to see how it works in the context of a commercial song with a singer. The examples above demonstrate, IMO, the proper ways of playing it to backup singers and to take solos.

[This message was edited by Jeff Lampert on 20 March 2001 at 07:47 AM.]

posted 20 March 2001 08:09 AM         

The pedals may be thought of initially as a bar slant. Certainly pedals 5 & 6 represent the most common slants, but by allowing the lower of strings 5 or 6 a half tone, you're now able to fill in those missing strings you skip on non-pedal, resulting in a fuller chord sound. The various combinations of pedals will often allow you to strike 4 or 5 tone chords and different inversions that simply could not be struck with a bar slant. Obviously, with a triple neck non-pedal guitar combined with bar slants, you can get most of the common combinations if all you're after is a single chord voicing. But on pedal C6th, you get all of that flexability and instant speed of switching with pedals and knees instead of neck jumping.

I've found that my non-pedal study has made learning pedal C6th much easier and more understandable. But that said, I've found the pedal based version easier to play, fuller sounding, and offering many more options that I've found on non-pedal. And I should add that I play a lot of tunes still using my slants without ever touching a pedal and there are some nights when a lap steel is just more fun and sounds better to my ear than the big pedal chords. My ideal world includes room for both, but there is a lot in common.

posted 21 March 2001 04:15 PM         

E9th: Bar at 8th fret. Pick strings 4, 5 and 6. Go down on A and/or B. While letting the strings ring. Note that strings 5 and/or 6 are moving while string 4 (and 5), is remaining the same.

C6th: Bar at the 12 fret. Pick strings 3, 5 and 6. Now mute the strings and move to the 5th fret and pick strings 7, 6 and 5.

There were NO moving tones while sustaining given notes in the C6th example.

Yet, in both examples the first and second set(s) of notes were identical.

E9th flows and makes use of moving tones in most cases. C6th jumps from one note (chord) voicing to another while rarely making use of the moving tone type of playing.

There is ONE exception to the above. And that is the way Jerry Byrd plays C6th. The way I wish with all of my soul some PSG players would have done. But we will never know since I am not aware of a single PSG player who has ever used the "moving" tone type of phrasings while playing C6, outside Jerry.

And I agree wih all the other posters on their analogies also,

carl