The Steel Guitar Forum

I grew up in the Philly area in the 1960s where there was very little steel guitar being played or heard. When I was about ten years old some kids moved into our neighborhood from Colorado and their mom loved country music and played records all the time. She had some old Bob Wills records and I lov...

Andy, I read something which Buddy Emmons posted on the forum a while back. He said that he played for a while with fingernails only and he couldn't tell any difference between that sound and the sound of fingerpicks. I've been practicing that way now for about 2 years and it seems to be true. I use...

George Barnes. And also a local Philly guy named Steve Giordano.

I've been playing steel for almost ten years now but since I only get to practice/play on weekends, my progress has not been particularly stunning. I must say however that the most noticeable progress I made was when I finally got to take a few lessons from an experienced pro (Dave Van Allen) who sh...

Is it possible to use standard on-board sound on a laptop (DELL latitude) to get a decent audio recording or do you have buy an add on soundcard? I've tried it with just the standard audio input on the laptop to record my guitar and then I used CoolEdit v2.0 to capture and modify the recording. I ge...

I'm not sure what fingerstyle means with regard to the steel. Does this mean without finger picks?? If so, then I'm definitely interested. I've played classical guitar for years and I struggle with using metal fingerpicks on the steel. It does seem difficult however to get a bright sound on E9 witho...

Hey Dave, Looks beautiful. It strangely resembles a ZB I once owned and tried to play. I'd come over to see it but I'm afraid it would run across your back yard to get away from me...or turn and attack me.

I've played classical guitar for a long while and when I started playing steel a few years ago, learning to use fingerpicks felt nearly impossible. I was so used to feeling the strings with my fingers that the metal finger picks just completely threw me. I didn't know what my hands were doing. I swi...

Another thing to avoid if you're having any kind of ear ringing or equilibrium problems is caffeine.