10.6 create bootable image

Well I've just purchased a new Lacie SSD Thunderbolt / USB3 drive and have been setting it up. I currently have a portable FW drive with several partitions and am imitating the setup.

Partitions-
10.6 Installer
10.7 Installer
10.8 Installer
10.9 Installer (currently blank)
10.7 Startup (with maintenance tools)
10.8 Startup (with maintenance tools)

Anyhoo, the 10.6 installer won't boot. I've tried copying from a version that does boot (my old drive) and also from a clean image of a DVD and also from the DVD. Also tried using Carbon Copy Cloner to clone from an image and from the working DVD. I've even imaged directly from the DVD on a machine with a clean system install

The error is (when booting in verbose mode)-

failed to load mach_kernel failed: status 7

Which I suspect is could be related to the fact the DVD is some hybrid Joliet/ Apple Partition Map and the SSD is formatted GUID. My hope is that once I can get this working I can slipstream it to 10.6.8 using instaDMG.

Anyone have any ideas about this please? And before you ask yes it is a genuine retail DVD and I am using it on a machine that will boot using the DVD.

Any help appreciated. Apologies I've posted this elsewhere but realise this is a better place for the question