The Steel Guitar Forum

Hey Deirdre, I have audio samples of the first Practice Exercise. Shoot me an email (with your email)

I use stainless steel bullet bars -- the Dunlop 918 and the John Pearse Cryogenic. I find that over time the bar picks up oils from my hand and gets more and more slippery. I have found that cleaning them with a liquid de-greaser gets them back to a pristine state and makes them much easier to grip.

Kevin Barry uses high C6 (hi-lo) G-E-C-A-G-E. He mostly plays a pre-war Rickenbacher Bakelite through a Fender Amp, and he does play without picks, using a Stevens bar, and sometimes a big honking Pedal Steel bar. He's awesome :) He's also a great Blues/Jazz Guitarist -- he teaches Guitar at Berklee...

I'll be seeing both of them tomorrow night a tiny club in Cambridge, MA (Atwoods :)). Duke's doing a few of his instrumental shows this month. Super nice folks too! I will add that for the past year or so they have both been members of Peter Wolf's band both recording and on the road. Duke's also be...

I don't think it's necessarily built from two guitars. It looks to me like the black neck was painted. The blond under the pickguards looks original. You'd be able to tell for sure if you remove the pickguard and/or tuning pan from the black neck. I like the way it looks now -- kind of unique and ar...

Michael, That is awesome! It seems very close to a Weissenborn design (hollow - square neck), although inexpensively made? Those strings look pretty ancient, but what does it sound like?


--Jamie

That's an awesome performance! You really come close to speedy's feel on it, while still making it your own. Nice job ... I'm going to go get it off your site now.

--Jamie

As Ray hints at, the most comprehensive Hawaiian (and other) Steel Course is by Jerry Byrd. It's definitely an investment, but it comes with 2 CD's of him playing the examples/tunes. You can get that at Scotty's. It really helped me to get going, and I am still working on the later lessons. If you'r...

That is pretty cool! A few months ago, Jason Lollar rewound a dead fry-pan 1.5" pickup for me, and told me he typically winds them a bit hotter than the originals. No complaints from me! He did a wonderful job -- and included a ground wire (the original fry-pans lacked that -- and used the alum...

The sad thing about the custom shop is that they say it takes us $3000 to make a guitar that sold for $152 in 1958. It breaks my heart. Having said that, I bought one of the FS52's a little cheaper on eBay and was totally dissapointed with the quality. Recently though, I bought a 1948 Princeton. I c...

I don't think you're off the mark at all. I'm sure a collector wouldn't mind snatching it up at your BIN price, Most of the people here are players, not collectors, and don't sweat about getting a fry pan pickup rewound or replacing frozen pots etc. Your offering looks very clean and I hope you get ...

Scotty's site is not quite state-of-the-art, but you can definitely get it from him. He accepts PayPal direct, but you'd need to call to use a credit card (I think).

Anyway, here's the page: Jerry Byrd Course

--Jamie

I agree. My pre-war chrome plated Rick has two black knobs, and my post-war black plated Rick has two white knobs.

Congrats Chris!

I wish I could have made it, but Cakewalk has been keeping me chained to my desk for the past couple of months. I am definitely doing Joliet again, though!

--Jamie

The Don Helms book now comes with a CD instead of cassette tape. Don Helms plays all the songs on the CD.

It is available right in the SGF store (click on Instruction at the top of this page).

I ordered 6 CD's in mid-October and it was on my OCT statement. Since I hadn't gotten them a month later, I wrote an email asking about it mid-November. I did not get a response, and I was bumming out about it (certain I'd been had). To my surprise, they all showed up towards the middle of December....

But what I am now thinking is that if G was on top then tabs writen for c6 would not be right. You just need to shift normal C6 TAB over one string: TAB on String 1 becomes String 2, String 2 becomes String 3, ... Herb Remington has a bunch of A6 TAB that can be used on High-C6 as well: A6 has the ...

Excellent post Mike! You've shared some very valuable suggestions and knowledge there. Very fortunate timing (for me), as I am currently trying to figure some stuff out. Thanks loads.

--Jamie

Thanks for that, Andy.

I didn't catch it the first time around, but it's a very cool documentary.

--Jamie

Very nice job! The guitar itself looks just like the New Yorker. It looks like there's a 2nd pickup (humbucker?) under the cover. Does the 'tone' control blend between the two?

--Jamie

Will, A6 is usually tuned just like your G6 but one whole step higher. Hi-Lo: E-C#-A-F#-E-C#-A-F#. Now "High C6th" is tuned the same way except it's another 1-1/2 steps higher, but Jerry Byrd's C6th is tuned (Hi-Lo): E-C-A-G-E-C-A-G. You could do a similar thing from G6 to Bb6.

--Jamie

Thanks Ray! That's very cool information. This forum is the best.

--Jamie

I haven't tried this... But, it seems Brad's suggestion is a good one. That or Ab6 (you could call it Fm7 and impress :). A standard set of guitar string gauges runs like: Std G6 Ab6 Chart gauges for Ab6 ------ ----- ----- -------------------- E .013 B -5 C -4 .017 B .018 G -4 Ab -3 .024 G .024 E -3...

Nice job, guys! I like Basil's backing track too. Well done.

--Jamie

Cindy uses a 'high' C6 (Hi-Lo): G E C A G E C A. She says to ignore the lower 2 strings (C A) for a 6 string.

This has the same intervals as 'standard' A6, but 3 half steps higher. A6 (Hi-Lo): E C# A F# E C# A F#