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Permalink Reply by Keni Lee Burgess on May 22, 2010 at 8:37am

A four string would be great. You can string and tune it just like the 4 high strings of your familiar 6 string. Dgbe Then if you tune the e down to d, you will be in a mini open g tuning and can explore bottleneck slide. I like to split the 6 string open G tuning (DGDgbd) basically in half. 4 string Dgbd and 3 string GDg
Having bass experience, you will find that 151 (GDg) to be very user friendly. Please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions. Enjoy, Keni Lee

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Permalink Reply by Outhouse Instruments on May 22, 2010 at 8:40am

Simple. Build a 4 string. Tune dgbe. Play it like the bottom 4 on a 6 string.
While you are doing that, build a 3 string. Here you really have options. Ducibox with dulcimer fretting or 3 string guitar with all the frets.
Pick one. Then while you learning it, build the other.

But to get "outside the box" do one of 3 things. Build a 3 string dulcibox. It's different , but easy to play.
OR go waaaay outside the box and build a 1 string. That's about as far as you can get from a 6.

Don't guess I didn't help much, go with the dulcibox.
Matt

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Permalink Reply by Wes "I'm Baaaaack" Yates on May 22, 2010 at 9:17am

Huzza!

-WY

Keni Lee Burgess said:

A four string would be great. You can string and tune it just like the 4 high strings of your familiar 6 string. Dgbe Then if you tune the e down to d, you will be in a mini open g tuning and can explore bottleneck slide. I like to split the 6 string open G tuning (DGDgbd) basically in half. 4 string Dgbd and 3 string GDg
Having bass experience, you will find that 151 (GDg) to be very user friendly. Please feel free to contact me if you have any further questions. Enjoy, Keni Lee

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Permalink Reply by Lee Ann on May 24, 2010 at 11:24am

Thank you all for your replies. I've decided to go ahead with a 4 string first, then experiment with other string numbers later. Keni Lee, thanks for the tuning suggestions. I've been reading your lessons with great interest. I'm sure I'll have some more questions as I move along with the project, so thanks in advance!

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