The Steel Guitar Forum

I watched the Nashville on record concert which has the stars of the television show Nashville singing at the Ryman and I was wondering who the steel player was. He sounded great and had a unique looking what I think was a Sho Pro which had several switches and dials on the deck.

Thanks RickY for the information. The problem I always run into is on the 4th and 8th strings. With the helper spring on the 4th the 8 string will only lower so far then the raise finger kicks in and will not allow it to lower to the proper note. Again removing the helper spring on the 4th string re...

Over the years I have worked on several Sho-Buds and whenever I have found a string that will not raise or lower properly removing the associated helper springs usually solved the problem. I am curious as to how the guitars were setup originally as they don't have this problem when they come new fro...

Hi John. I retired at the end of June and I have spent the last few months doing all the things around the house I should have been doing for the last 30 years.Its amazing the number of things you can find to do when you don't have a good excuse not to. I am hoping to play alot more but prospects ar...

Hi Larry. Spoke to Fred briefly.The next time I visit the area I will plan to have a car so that I can see his store and catch some of the local players.
I have been pondering coming to the Portland jams and hope to make the trip subject to my gig schedule and weather. It sounds like a lot of fun.

We are visiting Scottsdale in the Old Town area this week and were wondering if there any steelers are playing in the area. Apparently country bands actually play 6-7 nights a week here. Unbelievable!

Nevada for sure

I will be in Las Vegas next week 9-13 Sept and was wondering if there will be any steel players playing around there then. We go about 3-4 times a year but have not seen any players there previously.

I purchased a 80x amp about a month ago and had my inaugural gig with it last weekend. The room I was playing in has a capacity of 170-200 with >20ft ceilings. The 80x was not miked and the band was playing to fill the room. I could not detect any distortion from the amp at all. That is playing a lo...

Last fall I had my trusty Peavey LTD 400 break down on me for the first time in over 30 years on a gig. Luckily there was a house Fender Hot Rod Deluxe sitting on the stage and I just plugged into it. Without adjusting any of the dials it had the sound I was getting out of my Peavey with lots of hea...

Thanks Tom. I had the caps replaced about 15 years ago and I store my amp beside my furnace. Probably not a good idea. I will take the amp in to my guru and see what happens.

I did a whole bunch of swapping today even with some old Chinese tubes I had in the amp years ago. There were some slight tonal differences but the gain stayed quite consistent. Oh well the amp is totally useable with enough volume to do the gigs that I do. But it sure would be nice to have it runni...

I finally had a chance to pull the amp out and check the tubes. All three preamp tubes are 12Ax7's. They appear to be the tubes I put in there probably 8-9 years ago( 2 Mesa's and 1 Gt). I suppose the next step is to try some new tubes although it seems strange to me that the amp was doing fine unti...

1. I have an original Fender 4x10 Bassman amp that I purchased back in 1985. It has been a wonderful sounding amp for guitar and reasonably reliable. About 6 months ago it started making sounds every time I hit a C note. So I took it into our city's main amp guru and after about 3 days I got it back...

Thanks for the setting. I bought a Special 130 from a pawn shop years ago as a backup guitar amp but I never found a good setting for steel. With this setting the amp is not as spot on as my LTD 400 but it is still nice. As an aside about a month ago my LTD suddenly broke down on stage and there hap...

If you do a search on the IVL it looks like several people tried this with mixed results.

Thanks John. I remember the IVL unit. In fact I believe it was manufactured in this region. What I am interested in finding out if the pickup for that unit has a connector that matches the Roland pickup. Probably not but I thought I would ask anyway.

I have a Roland synth that works great with my guitar and I was wondering if there is or was a steel synth pickup manufactured that would work with this unit? I know it has been at least 10 years ago that steel synths were popular.

Rick lives in Canada but plays mostly in Washington State.I don't know if he is a member of the forum but I know he follows it.

When I had a lacquer Legrande I had a piece of plexi glass cut to fit in the space between the necks. The only thing was once a string broke unexpectedly and I was startled then dropped the bar ahead of the front neck leaving a ding in the deck and then it fell leaving a ding in the pedal bar.Nice t...

Who is building this guitar? A push pull with square crossrods with easy change bellcranks - GREAT!!. As long as whatever the mystery element that gives an Emmons push pull it's distinctive tone is there it should be a keeper.

TTT

To comment on Jim's question about amp voicing I have always thought that the increase in mid range honk was to compensate for the lack of mids on the all pull guitars that started coming out in the late seventies. If there is one thing missing in all pull guitars compared to push pulls it is midran...

I owned a fully loaded lacquer Legrande 111 for years and it was the little things that drove me crazy enough to sell it. Like how much more would it cost to put a routing in the rear apron like a JCH to allow removal of the crossrods. Other than some design changes at the bridge assembly there appe...

I owned this guitar for several years and it was a great steel. When I had it there was actually 8 knees and 8 pedals. I swapped straight across for a black Jch because the other fellow through in an 8 string dobro with the deal. Looks like it is still in good shape and it would be a good buy for so...