Hello Carl, nice to hear some slide guitar blues! I used to play the blues when I was young, but at some point moved to other things. Never forgot about the blues, though - it's there, somewhere under the other layers of influences forever. If you check my photos you may find a picture of a tin-can resonator guitar I built when I was about 18 cos I couldn't afford a "proper" guitar" and resonator guitars were almost non-existent in Finland anyway at that time. I made the G B and E strings double, cos I'd seen some old blues guy AND John Mayall both play blues on 9-string guitars. Whether they had the thin strings doubled or the thick ones octaved I don't know even to this day. But I still use my 9-string guitar for gigs and records - in fact it's on one of the songs on my Kantele CD (kantele is the Finnish National Instrument) which will be out any day now, physically as soon as I'll go and get the boxes from the freight terminal!. You can hear that song (with kantele, 9-string guitar, percussion and a few woodwind instruments) "Aurinko Laskee Elokuussa" here: http://www.mysace.com/steinbockstani The title means "The sun will set in August" which it does in northern Finland... Very best wishes for the new year, Stani