Thanks All... yep, ol' Curt was a pretty good guy, on top of a fine slide player. I'll miss playing music with him in the various configurations we sometimes used to. There were quite a few, other than the duo act. We even played in a string band pit orchestra once, for the Southwest Virginia Ballet production, Ties. Had a ball.
8-string dobros... yeah, its crazy. Mike Auldridge. I don't know of anybody else who played one right off... maybe Cindy Cashdollar. It's a steel guitar thing. They give you the ability to tune to either a 6th or 9th. My recollection is Curt settled on an open G tuning with some E notes added. (making it an G6 I guess...? *there are C9 and E tunings too I think) With a squareneck, the string spacing can be whatever you need it to within the bounds of physics. I just flared the nut out to accommodate the extra two strings. That particular guitar was a fairly inexpensive one he had, (imported Regal) we replaced the cone and spider with upgrades from Paul Beard, and bought a special made tailpiece for 8 strings. I seem to remember making new bridge saddles too, and messing them up a few times getting the spacing right. The really hard part I remember well... it was the headstock. That guitar had a slotted headstock. I had to dowel the old pegholes, cut the dowels flush, hide the holes, (black paint inside the slots) drill new holes for a set of 4-on-plate mandolin tuners that had been modified to accept much larger gauge resonator guitar strings. They had to fit exactly right on the cheeks of the headstock, because there was just barely room. Stringing that guitar was a major PITA job, but not something you had to do that often. Just another crazy project I got into. Obviously, it must have worked...
I have plenty of the "Porch" cds Coz... so many I use 'em for drink coasters! I'll be glad send you one. Curt's "Slidetown" projects were his, so I'll have to check and see if he had any hard product. They were both so long ago. Man, I was really looking forward to doing something new. I still will, it'll just be something else.
Anyway, Thanks for the kind thoughts and words.
