OK, so I know this is porobably a vain effort, but I'd actually like to hear about playing the English guitar in this thread.

When I had one, I tuned its five courses to C G C D G, which gave me basically a diatonic inctrument in C that could be played in major or minor. It sounded cool in a Martin Carthy, dulcimer tuning kind of way, and its sound was ideal for songs that happened to be in C and could be droned along to; one song that I remember sounding very good was "Brave Wolfe." As I recall, I did research the tuning before I chose this setup.

By the way, tuning it was a bit of a bear as the "friction pegs" didn't actually have all that much friction, so retuning between songs was pretty much out of the question.


Ultimately, along with the instrument's innate fragility, what caused me to give it up was that not everything I sang was in C or could be accompanied in a droning manner, especially not when I was playing with my band (which was most of the time).

So, has anyone experience with some other radically different tuning that allows more flexibility in key choice? Not that I expect Simon would sell me back the instruent now...

Claire