The Steel Guitar Forum

Tommy & Herb…if you can make the 7 to 12 fret span, stay on fret 7 and 12 and reverse your first and little finger positions for the second set of harmonics.

You may want to try something that could be easier to accomplish the same sound, and that is to place the first finger on the second string and little finger on string three, fret seven, and move your fingers down two strings at a time as in the original suggestion. Then move your the fingers to the...

You nailed it Olli. The lick consists of two sets of harmonics on the C6 tuning. The first set is acquired by placing the little finger on the E or second string at fret 12 and the first finger on string three at the nineteenth fret. Using the same finger positioning, drop them to strings three and ...

If I may shed some light on the recording, it’s one of what I call “chop checking” tapes I used to run once in a while. First of all, if it sounded like Paul, it was supposed to. There was a lick Paul played that I liked, so I played it to check my style of blocking against his pick blocking t...

Scott, that's my kind of humor. I swear if I ever record it again, I'll call it Betty's Boogie and Horace Emmons will be the name I'll use as writer.
We're having fun now.

Just for the record, I first married when I was 17 years old, which required my mother to find my birth certificate in Mishawaka, Indiana and send to me. After weeks of waiting, my mother called and told me the holdup was due to my name being entered erroneously at birth. It wasn’t Bud or Buddy Ge...

At Bobby Bowman’s request I shall supply a bit of info regarding the picture. The steel is a triple neck Fender and the amp is the 1949 Fender Super Tube Tweed Amp with a V shaped front and two speakers, what size I don’t know. I left home at age 16 so I’m assuming I was 15 years old when the ...

At Bobby Bowman’s request I shall supply a bit of info regarding the picture. The steel is a triple neck Fender and the amp is the 1949 Fender Super Tube Tweed Amp with a V shaped front and two speakers, what size I don’t know. I left home at age 16 so I’m assuming I was 15 years old when the ...

Aint me!

Thank you Bill. Just couldn't resist it.

Violin

No problem on the interpretations, Mark, and thanks for the nice words. I hope you sell a million!
My best...Buddy

Mark,
Best of luck to you with your Emmons Licks Volumes. If I ever decide to play again and run into trouble, I may have you send me a few.

Here’s the story behind the 20 string Emmons in the picture. We were a few weeks away from starting the Western Strings album and I wanted to record Linda Lou with a dual string sound. I had been playing one Shot Jackson built but didn’t want to ask him to play it because I was with the Emmons Guita...

Chris… I wish I knew the difference and so do many of the guitar builders I’ve worked with over the years; and they know a lot more about what they’re doing than I did when I designed it. The physics of a design has much to do with the sound. Some of the distinct differences in push-pulls and other ...

You’re quite welcome, Ron. I appreciate your feelings toward the Blade, Paul. As for sound, there’s not that much difference between the Blade and what you hear recorded with the first Emmons guitars. Maybe you could liken it to playing the same venue on different nights with the same equipment and ...

I don’t remember the year I received the Touch My Heart guitar but there was a prototype or two I played before I settled for it. It would be safe to say it was one of the first production models from the Emmons Guitar Company and my first guitar to use on professional jobs. I probably played it a c...

I want to thank Steve Fishell for his posting of my wish to discontinue working on the bio. What I originally thought would be a simple task on my part has turned out to be something that has taken far more time and effort to “get it right” than I had hoped for. Because of that, the thought of stopp...

Well Cal, it goes something like this: Willie and I were sitting in a booth at a bar next door to Tootsies when a guy came up and said, "Mind if I sit down?" I assumed he was Willie's friend and Willie must have thought I knew him so we both told him to have a seat. I moved close to the wa...

Jim... The guitar I used on Word Games was the 12 string single neck I used on the Rainbow Album. The tuning was E13th, which is simply the E9th tuning with a C# note between the upper E and B strings.

tenstrings… His name was Coy Crank from the Indianapolis Indiana area and I’ve heard Little Jim speak of him many times. Jimmy Day, Sonny Burnette, Bud Isaacs, Coy Crank, and I shared credits on an album by Little Jimmy Dickens called, “Gonna Shake This Shack Tonight.” Coy passed away in 1997 and I ...

Fish, Good to hear from you. The story behind the F# and D# strings is pretty much based upon my concern for what to do on my first Ray Price session. Jimmy Day had set a high standard with his style on Ray’s shuffle sound whereas I was used to doing my thing on the more conservative recordings of E...

By the time that video was made I had already replaced the back neck in 1956 with a one piece wood neck. I went to the lumberyard and got a piece of curly maple the thickness of the aluminum neck, traced around it, and cut it out in my apartment. Sounds a bit extreme, but that’s the way I was at the...

Roger… I had been struggling with the strum chords versus the single note advantages of the middle D note since 1974. A few years ago I solved my problem with it on a 12 string Sierra by using two C notes next to each other and raising string 8 from C to D with a knee lever. I also added a B to the ...

Kenny… I do remember playing on a couple of guitars Charlie had ready to ship so yours was likely one of them. I know what you mean about not finding the licks. I haven’t played in so long, the last time I went to my guitar I couldn’t find them either.