The Steel Guitar Forum

6V6 or 6L6 power tubes? I can't tell from the photos.

"Chicken Stuff" was my favorite tune of his. Hop use to play a Stringmaster laying on a folding card table which also held his cigarettes, ashtray, a glass and a bottle of hootch.

I saw a picture of a bar a few years ago that was a basic bullet bar about the size of a 10 string pedal steel bar and it had a steel ring coming out of the middle of it that could swivel. It seems like with a bar like that, you could put your index finger thru the ring and have enough control with ...

I'd put string ferrules like what you find on the back of a Telecaster in the holes in the tailpiece to give the strings a more solid anchor.

It looks like the legs are a fixed length. There's got to be a way to at least level the back legs right?

Can a person still get parts for that guitar if they wanted to add a pedal or another lever or just add a couple pulls to existing levers?

That's really amazing Mike. I'm very impressed.

Swap out the half-ass pickup for a nice 8 string pickup. A lot of the mojo of those guitars' tone comes from the large horseshoe magnets. The internal pickup is not particularly special. Its the huge magnetic field its sitting in. I'd contact Jason Lollar. He makes replicas of 8 string Rucky Horsesh...

I too play an A6 8-string tuned like this E C# A F# E C# A G The 7th on the bottom opens up some nice combinations for western swing and bluesy jazz like a Dom7#9 among other things. If I wanted to shred, I'd change the 1st string to a re-intrant 9th interval (the B that would by pitch, be between t...

On my Excel U-12, the half-stops and I have them on 2 different levers, are nothing like any other guitar I've seen. Essentially it's comprised of 2 bellcrank looking parts facing each other. The one driving the cross shaft has a smooth face on it and it's facing another similar part connected to th...

Over many years I've learned 2 things about half-stops. You can feel the halfway point better with the inside of your thigh than the outside. And secondly, it's much easier to fineness the halfway point on a half-stop raise than a half-stop lower. Therefore I layout my guitar accordingly and have my...

I was experimenting with putting a dobro tuning on the middle neck of my Stringmaster. I knew I wanted an E in the middle but it got in the way of the core dobro tuning which I wanted to maintain. So I pulled it out of the middle and moved it down to the 8th string position but it's still in the sam...

One time at the St Louis steel convention Brumley played Jerry Byrd's arrangement of 'Dance of the Goldenrod' on a Ricky Panda 6 string C6. There's a lot of tricky bar wrangling in there but he nailed it.

Everything's the same but the fretboard. They're not interchangeable due to the different scale lengths.

Wow. I first met Bruce in 2007 at Colin Alder's Lapstravaganza in Santa Cruz where he played a set opening for Freddie Roulette. And a year later when we were both playing the 2nd Lapstravaganza along with David Phillips and Bobby Black, Bruce put me up for the night at his place. Great guy and tale...

When I first settled in North Hollywood in the early 70s, I lived about 2 blocks down Lankershim Blvd from Donte's jazz club. Every Monday was "Guitar Night" and they would either have Lenny Breau, Joe Diorio, Herb Ellis, Joe Pass, Bob Bain from the Tonight Show band, Al Viola or a couple ...

How much does it weigh in the case?

Any auto upholstery shop can sew one up for you in any color vinyl in about 10 minutes. All you need is a picture or sketch of the bag and its sections and bring your legs and rods so they can be test fitted.

I started out on rock & roll guitar like most guys and I made a living for a number of years doing that in the 60s and early 70s. When I had a guitar repair shop in the back of a music store in Norfolk, I was called on to set up a Fender 400, a D-10 ZB and an Emmons PP - none of which I had ever...

I inherited this from a friend who bought it new, never gigged with it - just played it around his apartment. I'd keep it myself if I played more guitar because it's exactly the color, pick guard, maple neck(not too thick, not too thin)and overall vibe I love in a Strat. Straight neck. Low action. F...

I've been playing steel around SoCal for about 45 years and the majority of the gigs have been 4-5 pc blend of California country rock and old school Nashville drinkin' & cheatin' songs. I played both necks for a long time and then switched to a U12 in the mid 90s. I know my changes and have big...

Wow. Hank was a great guy and he built some of the most interesting lap and console steels I've ever seen. He brought a few over to my house one time and each one was one-of-a-kind. The Swingray was my favorite. RIP

I've been playing an Excel U-12 w/25.5" scale since I bought it new in 2004. I never had any string breakage on the 3rd string using Jagwire .011s. A few years ago Jags were hard to come by for a while and when they were available again I broke a few .011s. I thought it might be a bad batch so ...

When I was coming of age in the Norfolk/Va Beach area and playing guitar in rock & roll bands,a lot of the bass players in the area were playing thru Seymour Custom speaker enclosures. They were about the size of a Fender Showman cabinet except they had cast aluminum end plates with "Seymou...

I have one of those and it's got all the stock parts. The only problem is the stop tailpiece/bridge part is for a 6 string guitar and has an arch to it. Is not flat like a lap steel bridge needs to be. And I could never find a replacement out of the dozens available, that also didn't have an arch to...