Very excited to receive my new Railboard sometime this week. It’s blue! I’ve kinda lost count but I believe this will be stick # 8 or 9 for me. I will definitely post some kind of video to mark the occasion. I currently have a bamboo 10 string standard tuning which I had Emmett file down as i’m Not overly fond of the “rails” sharp profile. I’m hoping the broader angle and lower action will make for a smooth feel.
Ferg

Welcome to the forum! Which tuning did you select?

Standard tuning. I have never experimented with alternates. It’s important for me to keep the bass strings low as I am mainly a rhythm section player .

Haha "Standard" tuning, good lord... which one is that? Matched Reciprocal, or Classic maybe? Hehe everyone, it seems, tunes differently. Classic or MR do seem to be the most common I think...
For me, my railboard is tuned to 'raised matched reciprocal' which I think sounds fantastic, but I have tried every tuning on the SE website - my 12 string ended up being tuned to mirrored 4ths (which I really 'took' to).

Anyways, congratulations on your new instrument - these things are a blast!

Now you have me thinking about an analog to Deep Matched Reciprocal for Classic tuning.

I guess i’m Adventurous enough to take on the stick but not enough to stray from the tuning as is. Who knows? To each his or her own. The bulk of my playing has been in the context of band, but as I don’t play as much as I used to, I find myself tinkering away on my own along with some programmed grooves.

Great to meet you here on the Stick forum, Fergus, and I think your blue Railboard will be quite roadworthy should you ever find yourself on tour again.

RMR is my all time favorite tuning. The melody side is back to square one, same as "Classic", or what we used to call "standard", with the high melody D at open and octave positions. (Now, that "open" position is at the "X-fret" in place of the nut.)

The bass side is up a whole step, at low D at the X-fret instead of low C. You'd think you'd lose an advantage in the low bass register but no, you'll find that the notes are clearer, easier to play and with faster action. The strings are correspondingly thinner for the whole step higher bass tuning, and especially the low interior bass strings are more resonant with harmonic content, also more like the rest of the string set.

I love it and my hands gravitate, no, levitate, to the lower pitched frets toward the headstock. All the notes in that low register are more uniform in timber and "feel" because the nut is spaced almost two inches back toward the headstock, away from the X-fret. I seem to get more bass for less and I always go for "more for less" - a major theme in Stick design.

Glad you chose this tuning and it's still "reciprocal" with matching lettered notes at any given fret, albeit reversed in pitch on the "contrabass" side.

Hi Fergus, are you the Fergus who played fabulous Stick on this video?

Me with hair