The Steel Guitar Forum

Congrats on the Stealth! I bought one a while ago before I took a bit of a musical detour (I've been plinking the uke a lot lately), and it's a truly gorgeous instrument with tone like a bell. Now that I've got over some of the hangups that were making steel so difficult for me to approach, I am rea...

Thanks to George Boards Piburn, I now have a lap steel I can truly call my own. I do have a 6-string Gretsch Electromatic that I'll be keeping tuned in open E for now, but it's just not the same, you know? This beauty sings. The tone is like a bell, and playing it through my Pod with a wee bit of pr...

Thanks for bringing this up (again... it seems to come around regularly) and for letting us know your impressions of the Alaska picks. Conventional picks have always been very uncomfortable for me - they pinch my cuticles in a way I just can't get used to - but I know I need the extra attack and ton...

Coming to this late, I know, but it occurs to me that you might add a LIMIT clause to your SELECT. A large result coming back from this query could very well hang things up for a bit.

I just upgraded from Sonar 6 pro to 8 Pro and I have to say I'm liking it a lot. I discovered that Boost module and went just a bit nuts with it :-) The next variant of this mix I'm working on, I'll have to back it off a bit and retrieve some dynamics. Great program, though. One of the things I fina...

Sigh. Never mind. I just got an email response from David Pascal, and he's out of stock.

I hope my Amazon order for the Vanduras album isn't supposed to come straight from him, or I'll never get it (it would explain why the shipment has been delayed twice).

Does anyone know if Pascal Records maintains a stock of their listed CDs? I'd like to get a copy of The Blue Hawaiians' "Sway" (now that I know from Gary Brandin that the tune I heard on youtube is actually from that album), but Amazon has ridiculous prices for the thing, and I just want t...

Aha! I was just going to post this question elsewhere, but since we have Gary on the line right here, I hope you don't mind if I put this here: I'm just learning steel (have picked up both pedal and lap steel), and I'm not yet practiced enough to be able to easily distinguish tunings by ear. Could y...

This sort of ties into the earlier question I had, as well. I'm finding palm blocking to be really difficult because of the weird shape I have to hold my hand in to get it into action, and seem to find pick blocking just more natural.

Have to get a couple of those DVDs...

I have some knee levers and assorted bellcranks as well- you don't really need keyed cross shafts but they came that way. Jim, would you be willing to part with some parts? The setup of this instrument only allows for one more knee lever in the short term, but I'd like to move toward more down the ...

OK, so I got that S-10 (pics soon). Now I'm faced with the prospect of gearing it up a bit. Though it is built to take more, it only came with one knee lever. Any thoughts on who might have appropriate parts for me to upgrade the thing, or do I need to find a local machinist? I'm sort of concerned a...

Do you have any way to monitor the levels you're recording? With your rig I'm not sure what kind of meters you might be able to view, but you want to make sure you're *never* going into the red. Unlike tape, digital has no head room at all, and hitting red means distortion.

If you haven't done so, it's absolutely critical that you install and direct I/O to ASIO drivers, rather than the native audio drivers on the PC.

Also, whenever you're doing audio work, kill all non-essential programs and services... especially firewalls, virus protection, etc.

Thank you all very, very much. This has been a great collection of responses, and the back and forth between you all has helped a lot, in giving me ideas how to approach this. I will absolutely be looking for local instruction, and I thank you for all your words of support. Back to practicing! :-)

I'd originally posted this in the Steel on the Web section, as a followup to Joseph Barcus' video post [http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=157663], but I realized that this really belongs here. --- I have a followup question about blocking. If I align my palm's lifeline with the string I...

I have a followup question about blocking. If i align my palm's lifeline with the string I mean to pluck, I either have to curl my fingers nearly closed to reach that string, or stretch them way out to the left, so that my palm can actually turn over far enough to to the blocking. What I wind up doi...

I recall a demonstration in which a couple of tones with a certain relationship were heard differently by different people. The demonstration was meant to show two different inherent styles of hearing, that I think were known as "analytic" and "synthetic". The gist of it was that...

The tutorial on blocking was really helpful, especially the bit about locating the palm crease. I've been trying to work out palm blocking vs. pick blocking, and this cleared up a lot for me.

Many thanks

I actually think this goes a bit beyond using the steel as a trigger for other instruments. These tracks are about processing, and using the harmonic capabilities of the steel in an unconventional electroacoustic context. To my ear, I hear mostly steel guitar, performed and manipulated in a variety ...

That is ingenious.
Thanks for the info, Ulric!

Thanks, Chuck, and I got your email as well. No need to attach/send, though... I think I'll whip up something similar of my own

How much difference does a blend control make when the pickups are that close together? More than I might think?

Chuck, where did you get that little chord cheat sheet taped to your instrument? Is that something you just printed up yourself from Excel?

Thanks for the question and the link. I should probably get a set of these as well. The picks I got at the local Guitar Center overlap right over my cuticles and actually are kind of uncomfortable. Maybe these will provide a smoother grip around my fingers.

Thanks, Gavin, for the sound advice... it's much appreciated. But! It's pretty much a done deal at this point. I've handed her half the cash and will pay it off shortly. The odd thing is that while I still think it's got a student model serial number (I'll just have to look more closely when I get a...