Lap/slide/dobro Question

[GregP]

I'm mucking around with open tunings on an acoustic that I've retrofitted for lap/slide playing (see footnote). I've been using open G, D, and DADGAD (which I already knew was more "Celtic", so I wasn't expecting different), and rather than trial and error on all the various tunings, I was hoping someone could point me to the most country-friendly tuning.

For "major-sounding" country, Open G has been just fine. But I'm not very good at understanding modes and intervals in order to consciously create a tuning that would lend itself well to a more "minor" and "moody" sounding country tuning. Any suggestions? The seemingly obvious answer is to tune to a minor chord, but I'd rather approach something that has at least a bit of a catalogue of music to it rather than something "experimental" or "made-up" so that I can start learning some passages by ear and adapting them to my own style.

Thanks for any help!

Footnote (longer than the actual post!):

So I inherited this crappy "Jasmine" (Takamine's budget brand) acoustic from a guy whose ex left it behind at his apartment. It seemingly has a preamp, but when I put a battery in, no dice... so beyond trouble-shooting that, I thought I would hang onto it for a "Nashville Tuning" guitar. Never got around to that, and after much mussing with the neck, I've realized that the action will always be way too high to play chords reliably in tune anyhow. See, the neck is severely bowed, and the truss rod is at about maximum tension-- heck, I'm afraid if I try to force it another millimeter, the whole neck is going to explode! Be that as it may, the action was still a bit too low for comfortable slide work in the lower frets. Kept bangin around and generally feeling too "precious" in attacking the strings.

So, I got a piece of 1/2" aluminum angle, sawed it down to size, and used a rotary tool and burr to smooth down the rough edges. One side of the "L" had to be shortened significantly (down to about 1/8") so that it would fit over the nut and rest against the fretboard. Dabbed the strings (still on the guitar) with a marker, and then touched the angle against the marked area to transfer the ink. Voila, hassle-free string spacing, sort of. A small triangular saw and some extra-fine (600?) sandpaper later, and I had created some string slots. I filed deeper into the slots in order to make the strings "level" on their tops, winging it for the most part. The "winging it" caused me to deviate a bit off-course for the low string, but the rest were still spaced properly, and the low string is within acceptable parameters. I might take another shot at it when I'm bored some day to make it "perfect".

The end result is that it seems to work fine. You can buy the commercial "nut overlay" things and they're not that expensive. But I already had aluminum angle on hand, and it was about 15 minutes of work. There is sufficient sustain, and the strings haven't broken yet even though I do "behind the bar" bends when playing lap-style.

Putting old junk to good use! Some people might recall this guitar from a "when is a gift not a gift" thread, in which I lamented that the only salvageable bit of this "found" guitar turned out to have a use after all! As a lap or slide guitar.