Lap Steel Tunings All tunings are listed from low to high (thick to thin), This tuning is popular with guitar players.
Open E – E B E G♯ B E – Almost the same as Open D, but tuned a whole tone higher.It is another tuning that works equally well on lap steel, standard guitars, and Weissenborn guitars. Open D – D A D F♯ A D – Open D is a popular blues tuning, and one of my personal favourites.It is also popular for Weissenborn style guitars as there is less string tension than the Dobro tuning when using standard guitar string sets. Open G – D G D G B D (low bass) – This version of Open G is very popular for musicians playing standard guitar as well as lap steel guitar.If you plan on playing acoustic bluegrass, or you’re a fan of Larkin Poe and blues musician Megan Lovell, this is your tuning. Open G – G B D G B D – This “high bass” version of Open G is the most common tuning for Dobro style resonator guitars.It is very versatile and there is a lot of learning material available online. C6 – C E G A C E – The C6 tuning is by far the most common modern tuning for solid body lap steel guitars.1940s Rickenbacher B7 seven string Bakelite lap steel guitar Getting Started on Lap Steel These five tunings for 6 string lap steel guitar are great starting points for anyone just beginning the lap steel adventure: There are some great links at the bottom of the page for anyone that wants to dive deeper. I’ve also included a few 10 and 12 string tunings. In that spirit of sharing, I created this web page that covers most of the 6, 7, 8 string tunings a lap steel player is likely to come across. Thankfully, those days are gone, replaced by a spirit of sharing. In earlier days, many musicians protected their tunings as trade secrets, sometimes going so far as detuning their instruments when they left the stage for a break, in case some sneaky lap steel player tried to “steal” their tuning. The lap steel tuning database contains about 100 of the most common steel guitar tunings. There are probably hundreds of lap steel tunings being used by players today.