Thanks Chris. Anybody that appreciates Willie is a friend of mine.

That's not a twelve string. It's one of my own homemade Nobros. It's a cross between a National and a Dobro brand resonator guitars, hence the name. The Nobro is only a six string but because of the way it's tuned, in a modified open "E" tuning moved up three half steps, and the way I play it, fingerpicking style and bottleneck, it sometimes has a sound that can approximate a twelve. I many times pluck double sets of strings tuned an octave a part.

The tuning I use goes like this, (bass side) GDGBDG (treble side). It ends up placing quite a lot of tension on the neck so I had to compensate by carefully selecting the strings I use. Light gauge seems to work best but there are subtle differences in various Light gauge string sets. Even a slightly too heavy 4th string would many times end up breaking under the load. I also separately purchase an unwound 3rd to replace the one that usually come with the Light gauge set for the same reason. It took me a while to discover which of these choices in string gauges would work best to do the job and I still experiment with new ideas as the technology involved with string production toss new string designs our way.

I hope to make myself a twelve string Nobro soon. I used a square neck from an old Harmony lap style guitar for this Nobro that I'm playing now, but I have a telve string neck that may work well for that next project. I've also got a number of other Frankensteinian ideas that I'm itchin' to get underway.

It looks as though my motagator "free" site is almost full so I'm not certain I'll be able to add much more to it.

Thanks again, and saw ya later, Reg