The Steel Guitar Forum

Great article, Tim. I discovered Weldon a few years ago. Love his stuff! Through the "Similar artists" links on Spotify, I then discovered Black Ace. A very different style from Weldon, but also cool. I’m obsessed with playing the blues on all kinds of "weird" instruments - mando...

Free acoustic blues show on YouTube. Thu, May 5/2022 at 8pm eastern. Join me for 40 minutes of blues played on mandolin, lap slide resonator guitar, and banjos. A couple of the songs will be on my square-neck resonator. Tell your friends! https://youtu.be/yOKKWLo1rik A slide song from a previous sho...

On Wed, Oct 6/2021, I'll be doing another YouTube Live show, singing and playing some acoustic blues on banjos, resonator and mandolin. This will be the 16th show in a series that I've done since the pandemic began. Throughout the show, there are a couple songs that I'll be playing on my resonator. ...

Took me a while to get past the basic fear of playing with that screw in the middle of the bridge. Finally tried it out, and that fixed everything. Thanks, y'all!

Thanks, y'all. I'll lightly go at everything with a screwdriver and report back.

The humidity in the house can have some effect on this. If the temp outside is a lot lower then the furnace would run more. If this is the case, then you probably need a setup on the cone. Also, try slightly loosening the cone adjustment to see if it gets worse. If so, tighten it gently until the n...

Steve Lipsey wrote:Probably not this, but I actually sent my frypan back to Todd for a one-note buzz....and then finally realized it was a picture frame hanging loosely on the wall above my playing position...

Ha! I play in multiple places in the house, so you’re right: Probably not.

Miles Lang wrote:Might be that the resonator cone isn’t seated right

It wasn’t doing it a few days ago. Is that something that shifts? Sorry I have little knowledge of the inner workings.

Something really weird going on with my Gretsch Boxcar squareneck. I’m getting a loud buzz in either the bridge or the resonator (can’t tell for sure), but it only happens on certain notes. I’m tuned to open E, and it happens only on B notes. It doesn’t matter whether it’s "fretted&qu...

On New Year's Day, I'll be doing another YouTube Live show, singing and playing some acoustic blues on banjos, resonator and mandolin. This will be the eleventh show in a series that I've done since isolation. The show starts at 8pm eastern time. You don't need a mask to watch it from the comfort of...

So what I'm hearing is that I need to try other tuners. I was really hoping this would just be something I was doing wrong - but I couldn't imagine what that would be. It's not a tricky piece of tech!

Yep, that's the one I have, Jack. I don't know why it's not working. I'd assume it was just a defective one if I didn't have such a history of tuners not working.

I used to refer to myself as The Snark Slayer, because they'd only last a couple months and then stop picking up any notes. After going through that for a while, I bought a Boss tuner that lasted for years; it worked on my mandolin and banjos, and all was well. When it finally died, I wasn't able to...

Wow! Those are fantastic resources, y'all - and the price is right. Thanks so much. I've already started into some of them, but plan on partaking of all! In case anyone is interested, here are a couple songs I did on my resonator in Thursday's show. Like I said, I hadn't had the chance to apply all ...

Thanks so much, Ted. Just bought it.

Brad Richard wrote:"Backups and Fills" by Dan Huckabee.

That’s cool, Brad. Thanks so much for the recommendation. It’s not available on Amazon (at least not the Canadian site), but I’ll keep searching.

At 8pm eastern time on Thu, Nov 19 I'm doing another free acoustic blues show. Join me live on YouTube for 40 minutes of songs about love, death, and misery on mandolin, lap slide guitar, and banjos. Please share this with anyone who may be interested. I'm not sure if I've learned or changed much si...

Thanks, guys. I’ll try that!

Now that I’m finally playing my resonator more, my girlfriend has started noticing fingerprints on the steel bits. It hangs in our living room right beside my chair, so she sees it all the time when we’re sitting here chatting. To her absolute credit, she asked me about how to clean it before at...

Stitches in the bone? If we're striving for realism, we'll have to do better than that, y'all.

That’s very cool, David. Thanks! I’ll dig in to Steve’s stuff.

Thanks for the help and encouragement, guys. I’ll work on improving and varying the groove, for sure. You’re right that I’m using a flatpick. I’m not a fan of the sound (on my playing anyhow) or feel of thumb and finger picks, but I’ll see if there is anything I can do with those extra fin...

Hey y'all. If any of you have time, I was wondering if you could give this a listen. It's a YouTube video from my latest online acoustic blues show, and is the first time I played some slide (usually I just play tenor banjo and mandolin, which I understand is strange as it is). I've spent the past c...

That's fantastic, Bill!

Update: It doesn't fit any of my hangers. Even if I found one wide enough, there's not much of a flare out at the headstock, so it might rest on the tuning keys. I suppose I might be able to come up with some sort of diagonal way of hanging it on multiple hooks. I used to hang an old fiddle like that.