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Do you use re-entrant strings?
Yes
59%
 59%  [ 16 ]
No
40%
 40%  [ 11 ]
Total Votes : 27

Author Topic:  Re-entrant Strings?
Dom Franco


From:
Beaverton, OR, 97007
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 4:04 am    
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OH NO! Please,not another tread about tunings you are thinking...

Ok but here's my "slant" (pun intended) on the tuning question:

How many of you use a tuning with "Re-entrant" strings?

RE-ENTRANT usually means that a lower pitched string is placed on top of the highest string in a regular tuning.
It could also mean a higher pitched string placed at the bottom... Like a 5 string banjo or Ukulele...

I use re-entrant strings similar to the top strings on a pedal steel, on my 12 string non-pedal guitars.
And they give me some nice licks and rolls...
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Chris Templeton


From:
The Green Mountain State
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 5:10 am    
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Are re-entrant strings what most pedal steel players refer to as the chromatic strings?
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Dom Franco


From:
Beaverton, OR, 97007
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 5:24 am    
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yes the top two chromatic strings are "re-entrant"
Dom
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Riley Hart


From:
South Carolina, USA
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 5:42 am    
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To have your high G and D 'and' B re-entrants is almost decadent!
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Alan Brookes


From:
Brummy living in Southern California
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 10:49 am    
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I answered "No" because I rarely use them on Pedal Steel, and, since this the Steel Guitar Forum I assumed you were asking about Steel Guitar usage. I do, however, use the drone string on 5 and 7-string banjos.
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Ray Montee


From:
Portland, Oregon (deceased)
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 12:36 pm     THANKS, I have learned something new once again..........
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All of these years, I've been playing on re-entrant strings and didn't even know it.

Would I have become a better player having known that?

To this olde guy, what do all of those fancy names have to do with making good steel guitar music?


Last edited by Ray Montee on 3 Mar 2014 2:52 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Ray Montee


From:
Portland, Oregon (deceased)
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 12:37 pm     THANKS, I have learned something new once again..........
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All of these years, I've been playing on re-entrant strings and didn't even know it.

Would I have become a better player having known that?

To this olde guy, what do all of those fancy names have to do with making good steel guitar music? Whoa!
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Dom Franco


From:
Beaverton, OR, 97007
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 2:43 pm    
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Ray, You knew it but just didn't know the name...LoL

I still get my mind twisted when reaching for an outside string gets me a "lower" note, so I rarely play them when jamming.

But when I have worked out melodies and licks rocking back and forth from the "re-entrant" strings to the inside higher pitches it becomes more natural.

However in general, it just makes more sense to me when the strings ascend in order from low to hi!
Dom Whoa!
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Dom Franco


From:
Beaverton, OR, 97007
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 2:51 pm     Re: THANKS, I have learned something new once again.........
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Ray Montee wrote:
All of these years, I've been playing on re-entrant strings and didn't even know it.

Would I have become a better player having known that?

To this olde guy, what do all of those fancy names have to do with making good steel guitar music? Whoa!


Ray;
The fancy name "re-entrant" is probably a new term applied to the Pedal steel guitar within the last few years. When I got my first pedal steel in 1971,


(Fender 2000)
I couldn't figure out why anyone would ever tune those top strings "out of order" I heard someone call them "Chromatic" and that made a little bit of sense to me.

Dom
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George Piburn


From:
The Land of Enchantment New Mexico
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 3:52 pm     D on Top 8 String
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I use a D on top in place of the G on one of my 8 string tunings. ACEGACED lo to hi.

It serves as a Chromatic and is valuable for Melody - Scales - Blues Riffs - Pentatonic - Guitar Slinger Licks - Jazz.

Replacing the High G has been around since the 70's in the pedal world - I learned about it from Buddy Emmons in 1984.
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Edward Meisse

 

From:
Santa Rosa, California, USA
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 6:03 pm    
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There used to be an excellent Buddy Emmons instruction book available at the forum that explained his use of it very well. As far as I know, it's no longer available. You can get a little of it though from the Jeff Newman Basic C6 instruction as well as the Mike Auldridge 8 string reso CD. I wonder if I should do a book based on the Emmons book. It's an awfully effective device.
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Doug Beaumier


From:
Northampton, MA
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 6:12 pm    
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I've never heard the term "re-entrant strings" until this thread, but no... I have never tuned like that on non-pedal steel. On pedal steel, yes. Standard E9 PSG is like that and so is C6 PSG with D on top.
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Andy Volk


From:
Boston, MA
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 7:00 pm    
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The standard uke tuning with it' high 4th string is called a re-entrant tuning.
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Ray Montee


From:
Portland, Oregon (deceased)
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 8:09 pm     On my Speedy West tuning............
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It's a standard C#Min tuning with TWO (2) Re-entrant strings on the BOTTOM.........7th & 8Th string position.

I was always taught that it was a Chromatic tuning.
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Doug Beaumier


From:
Northampton, MA
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 8:41 pm    
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Quote:
I was always taught that it was a Chromatic tuning


Steel guitarists like to use the term "chromatic tuning" a lot. But chromatic implies 12 semitones, 12 half steps. Adding a 7b or a 9th to a tuning does not make it chromatic.
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Chris Templeton


From:
The Green Mountain State
Post  Posted 3 Mar 2014 8:52 pm    
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I know this is "Steel without pedals", but Buddy E. said this from a July 30, 2009 thread and has to do with the subject, so I thought I'd repost:
"In regard to the D# and F# strings on the bottom of the tuning; the only reason they were stuck on the bottom of the E9th tuning at the start is because I had permanent Sho~Bud and was on the road with Ray Price when I thought of the E9th diatonic string additions. Being a week or so away from a recording session with Ray, nothing short of a blowtorch would allow me to change the pedal setup, so I had to put the D# and F# strings in the ninth and tenth string positions and hope for the best. Through a lot of sweating and manipulation, I got through a turnaround to You Took Her Off My Hands and the diatonic tuning idea was a success. I came very close to scrapping the idea after that, but then I saw a couple of steel guitars in the Opry dressing room with the same tuning setup, so I decided to put the D# and F# strings in the first and second positions where they belonged.

People compare the two inverted strings of the tuning Herb Remington used to the E9 diatonic strings because they were the same pitch and were on the bottom of the tuning. I had the same tuning on my Bigsby in 1955, but my steel was patterned after Speedy West's guitar so I always thought the inverted tuning was his. Come to find out several of my steel playing heroes used it. But I can assure you that the two bottom strings of the inverted tuning in no way influenced my use of them for the diatonic sound. All one has to do is compare the rest of the inverted tuning to the remaining strings of the E9th and you'll find no relationship between the two. Maybe if I had waited and had Shot Jackson put an F# and D note on the first two string positions to begin with, we could have stuck with the E9th name and history would have been kinder to me. Laughing

I can't say for sure who came up with the E9th Chromatic name, but the first person I ever heard say it was Shot Jackson. I remember being surprised that he was aware of the word chromatic, so I figured he picked it up from a steel player that bopped into the Sho~Bud store and laid it on him."
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Cartwright Thompson


Post  Posted 4 Mar 2014 12:37 am    
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I like to put a high B on the bottom string of an eight string C6/A7 tuning. Never thought of it as a re-entrant though.
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Mike Neer


From:
NJ
Post  Posted 4 Mar 2014 4:58 am    
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I have never been able to get used to re-entrant strings--anything that makes playing more complicated, such as pedals or re-entrant strings is something I avoid, not because I am against the use of them or anything like that, but just because it gets in the way of my own fretboard logic.

Guys like Jeremy Wakefield and Russ Blake have no problem with this, though.
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Herb Steiner


From:
Briarcliff TX 78669, pop. 2,064
Post  Posted 4 Mar 2014 6:51 am    
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Both my non-pedal 8-string and 10-string guitars have a D on s.1 for the C6 tuning, so my C6 is identical to the pedal steel tuning..

On the 10-string back neck, I've changed to a modified Morrell E13 with a re-entrant F#, so I've now got this for E13, low to high.

B D E F# G# B C# E G# F#

I've been playing a D-10 non-pedal Miller guitar lately. Prior to that, an S-10 Sho~Bud in C6.
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Stefan Robertson


From:
Hertfordshire, UK
Post  Posted 4 Mar 2014 7:06 am    
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One of my Favs use re-entrant strings, Maurice Anderson.

I am not a fan of them but understand that they enable the player more advanced chords in the straight bar position.

I prefer to use my high strings for chromatics so I can tinker a bit more and get faster runs like a pedal steel.
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Alan Brookes


From:
Brummy living in Southern California
Post  Posted 4 Mar 2014 10:23 am     Re: THANKS, I have learned something new once again.........
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Dom Franco wrote:
...The fancy name "re-entrant" is probably a new term applied to the Pedal steel guitar within the last few years...

The term "re-entrant" strings is classical music terminology and has been around for hundreds of years. It refers to any instrument where, instead of the strings being in order, high to low or low to high, there is a break in the symmetry and instead you have strings out of normal order. The term was originally used for instruments such as the cittern, which often had the bass strings replaced by higher strings, similar to what in Nashville they call "High Strung Guitar" nowadays, but which they were using in Europe right back into the Middle Ages. Another example of a re-entrant instrument is the ukulele, where the fourth string is another treble string.

Ray Montee wrote:
It's a standard C#Min tuning with TWO (2) Re-entrant strings on the BOTTOM.........7th & 8Th string position. I was always taught that it was a Chromatic tuning.

Again, we're in the realms of classical music terminology. "Chromatic" means that all the notes of the scale are present. For instance, many folk instruments such as the Mountain Dulcimer have Diatonic fingerboards, which only allow you to play in one major and one minor key. If you were to add the missing frets then you would have "Chromatic" tuning. So, technically speaking, if you had a steel guitar tuned in Chromatic tuning in the key of C, the strings would be tuned C D E F G A B C (low to high). That would give you a severely limited range with only one octave difference between your first and eighth string.
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Stefan Robertson


From:
Hertfordshire, UK
Post  Posted 5 Mar 2014 5:10 am    
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Agreed. Forgot to clarify. My 8 string is not chromatic but my 12 string will be on the 1st 4 strings

I get re-entrant.
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Jerome Hawkes


From:
Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA
Post  Posted 5 Mar 2014 6:59 am    
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i think the early straight steel players used these re-entrant strings differently than the later pedal set up. the main benefit to the re-entrant on top is not for faster runs and scale tone holes being filled in, but in chord voicings which is how they were used from my observation. when buddy put them on top, now they were used more for single line playing and had little if any function as alternate chord voices. (plus you had pedals for that) - i think that is a misconception by many about these re-entrant strings. you want to keep the core tuning intact while getting the option of having these "out of the way" - putting them on top eliminates the usefulness in chord voicing as you now require huge spreads and tricky grips.
now, i do use the same Morrell E13 as Herb mentions (ex for 8 strings) - i find that works good for faster single lines found in lots of swing tunes. you really need that whole step advantage.
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Herb Steiner


From:
Briarcliff TX 78669, pop. 2,064
Post  Posted 5 Mar 2014 7:09 am    
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One clarification I would add to my post above is that Tom Morrell did not have his high F# as I do, re-entrant. His was in sequence; G# on s.1, F# on s.2, E on s.3, etc.
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Alan Brookes


From:
Brummy living in Southern California
Post  Posted 5 Mar 2014 9:34 am    
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That makes more logical sense to me. Buddy's arrangement seems more of an afterthought, which, of course, it was.
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