The Steel Guitar Forum

Sorry folks, I think you'll find this band, though very cool, are miming to a pre recorded track. The big clues are the bass not being plugged in, the lack of a mute on the muted trumpet and...an electric sounding acoustic steel guitar.
Still sounds great though.

I suppose he could have used banjo strings to take the higher tension. I use a metal bodied triolian with a nut raiser and I've just tried putting one of those old flat bars under the strings. It fits perfectly between the frets and works well as a capo. In fact it fits so well it's almost as if it ...

Hi David, I think it's a good idea to look at all of Bennie's tunes for clues to the tunings he was using. I'll have to go back and check "My Girl From the South Sea isles" but don't you think those first 3 notes of the solo -C E G - are played on open strings? The next note is G to my ear...

Hi Mike I spent a lot of time trying to work this out a few years ago and came to pretty much the same conclusion of the positions Bennie played as you did. I hadn't considered the use of a capo though. Where I differed was that I play the 2nd and 3rd notes on the first string - feels more natural t...

Hi Kev, Stacey Phillips has tab for this one in his book "the art of Hawaiian Steel guitar", though it's not exactly how Bennie Nawahi played it. I tried to work it out a while ago but was stumped by some of the low string parts. The only way I could figure it out is if he was playing a 7 ...

Here's some footage of Tom Doughty with Australian classical guitar meastro Craig Ogden at their recent concert at Manchester Bridgewater Hall UK. Craig Ogden was so impressed with Tom's sound when they met at a guitar festival that he asked Tom to perform with him. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR...

BMG magazine has started up again:
http://www.cliffordessexmusic.com/index ... t&catId=17

That's a great price you paid there. My D8 came from Canada and cost twice what you paid and no legs :( . The pickups seem to still have plenty of punch. The tuner buttons disintegrated pretty quickly so I replaced them with the pearloid buttons from Stewmac. Everyone told me that they would melt on...

Gerry Hogan can be found here: http://www.steelguitars.co.uk/

Bill

Hi Alan, I spoke to you last night on the phone about this and did a bit of research. I found this on Brad's page of steel: Harmony Harmony was at one time the largest American musical instrument manufacturer. The company was started in 1892 and purchased in 1916 by Sears, Roebuck of Chicago. By 192...

As a general observation,I find that if I'm asked to play steel for someone outside of the usual country/Hawaiian field I approach it by listening to their music. I'll think of horn lines I can imitate, steel drum sounds I can make, maybe some distorted swooping noises, something that will fit in an...

There are lots of different styles of reggae. I personally prefer dubb reggae to the more poppy Bob Marley style that you hear everywhere. My advice would be to let the Reggae musicians worry about the rhythm and you just play what you would usually play in C6. It should sound interesting and well w...

Ah Brad, I think the penny is starting to drop with me. C6 is a tuning I'm not really familiar with. When I look at these string gauge charts they never seem to tell you what octave the notes are in. I was thinking of tuning the 6th string to C below E to give a nice fat bass note. Is it usual, ther...

Thanks Lynn,
as usual I've missed the obvious
I thought I'd try these gauges - unless someone knows otherwise?

C E G A C E
.056 .052 . 022 .020 .017 .013

That equals 162ibs and hopefully gives me a nice fat sounding bass on the bottom C.

Thanks Carroll. I've got to be careful here. A dobro would take a higher tension of string than my guitar. I found this string tension calculator: http://mcdonaldstrings.com/stringxxiii.html but I don't know much about these things. Does anyone know what a safe string tension might be? The string ga...

I have a K&S Weissenbourn copy that's not getting much use at the moment so I thought I'd tune it to C6 - CEGACE low to high,instead of the G tuning I usually use. What string gauges would anyone recommend? It has a 25.5inch scale neck. I've plenty of info on electric lap steel string gauges, bu...

Hi Robbie,
Bennett steels are made on the Wirral. I was told that he does do custom orders so it may be possible to contact Ron Bennett. I've heard good things about them, a friend of mine recently bought a double 8, but I've yet to see it.

Bump this one up - I want to know the answer as well

Hi Bob, It'd probably be worth you posting this question in the Note Cannons section of the Micheal Messer forum http://michaelmesser.proboards7.com/ this site is dedicated to Nationals and there are some very knowledgeable people there. The consensus of opinion is that Dave King is your man for rep...

Beautifully played Fred.
It's one of those tunes that can be played a hundred different ways and it still sounds great. Except when I played it for an exam at music college - it was very off putting when the examiner and my accompanist fell into fits of laughter at my attempt.

I got an email from Anthony this morning Basil, looks like he'll be contacting you. Let us know how you get on with the chippy oil, I'm loosing money from gigging now with the price of diesel. Looks like I'm going to be sitting outside the back of K.Lee's Supper Bar with a sieve for the next few wee...

I've sent you a PM Anthony, but Basil's gear looks a lot better than mine. I'd take him up on the offer if I were you.

Bill

I love these arrangements Todd. I've done a few myself on tricone and I'm amazed at the variety of tone that can be obtained from the instrument. I love the rubato effect you've created with Magnetic Isle. One of the advantages with playing solo is that you're not restricted by tempo.

It came with the guitar which I won on Ebay. Sorry I can't help anymore, but I'm sure someone else will chip in. They must be fairly common though as I've got another one somewhere that was in a bag of bits my dad gave me.