The Steel Guitar Forum

Deleted. Best of luck Charley.

Been mostly away from the forum recently so I only just now saw this - I'm very sad. Music Works was (and still is, really) my "local" shop from my teen years on, and I used to see Pudgy fairly regularly. Bought a lot of strings and picks and allsorts from him, and he was always very patie...

I'm with you there, Hamilton - I'll only be 60, but still. Oops is right.

So my answer the OP is, yeah, definitely. But for some reason I haven't yet - probably because I'm too stupid to understand Chris Ivey's post....

Funny. I've seen that pair of changes on every Buddy Emmons instructional material for the E9th neck. I saw the same thing somewhere , on something on eBay (an album or a book or something) that appeared to come out some time in proximity to the Black Album. I had thought of putting those changes t...

Also by the Firesign Theater: Everything You Know Is Wrong (I just sold a box of cassettes [!] on eBay; had to keep We're All Bozos On This Bus .) Which is also totally on-topic (just like Alan!), since, if they were right, and everything you know is wrong, then nothing you know is right. Right? Ap...

Let there be light!

Oh, wait...

And you'll probably get nothing much out of it.

(The book, that is - eventually you'll get plenty out of the dog.)

For what it's worth (and from me it ain't much), before I switched to two RKLs, I had the 6th string whole tone lower and the 1st string semitone raise together on the one RKL, and it worked well for me for a good while. But I've become a zealot for the conversion to raising 1 and/or 7 a semitone on...

b0b, I believe you can close this one up if you want....

Funny but it was a couple of faux Lloyd licks (and a couple of Rusty Young licks too) that first caught my conscious attention to me doing that blocking trick! That feels a tiny bit better to think that maybe the great Lloyd faced that issue too....

And John, thanks for the insights - in some ways, I can relate, because I have played a lot of different stringed instruments including lap steel, all of which have led to me developing somewhat unique approaches from one instrument to another, and that's undoubtedly coloured my steel "techniqu...

Chris, I have noticed that I also use the left-hand thumb to block the lowest strings as you describe. Same reason, really - to clean up the scraping of the wound strings when doing longish bar moves. Donny, I've been playing just over five years. I'll never say that I'm any good , but I'm no longer...

And personally, I never liked having the B-to-A# move on the vertical - I use it so much more now that it's on one of my RKLs (but YMMV and all that stuff)....

Agreed that "losing" the standard C pedal would make some faster moves much more difficult, but I see no harm in using the vertical for an additional 4th string whole tone raise, which would allow unique combinations with A & B which would add versatility to the B & C-type voicings...

Thanks, Mike - I do roll the bar rather than "scrape" it for vibrato, but for fast moves from one fret to another, there's no avoiding it. I also do pick fairly forcefully now. Blocking the 7th just makes all of those moves much cleaner. I don't see any downside, and though I admittedly ha...

I posted my similar problems with my middle finger a while back, which started for me when I switched fingerpicks. It's taken me a very long time, but slowly I've readjusted my small motor skills and have regained a bit of my middle finger dexterity (which was never very great to begin with) to wher...

This is undoubtedly something that all decent players do* without even thinking about it, but as I've never seen it specifically taught in the books I've read, I thought I'd put it out there to see who does it regularly and consciously or intuitively. When doing 8, 6 & 5 string grips on E9 (espe...

Buddy was one of my heroes from childhood, many MANY years before I ever even considered actually trying to play the steel - just from reading about him in many music magazines from the times. I'm just an ordinary guy, and can barely play the steel to save my life, but it was Buddy's example that al...

It may not be the one that Gary's talking about, but it's the one I'm talking about!

That steel never fails to make me drool....

Personally I find the waffle-style surfaced pedals on my '70s MSA to be more comfortable than the slicker pedals on my previous steel, a Simmons Genesis, and in terms of use with the vertical, I think a little (but not too much) friction is helpful in keeping your foot where you want (or expect) it ...

If it had been the double-strung steel Lane described, it would have been my dream Sho-Bud - and I would not have had the resources to purchase it anyway. Double darn.

Very curious to learn more about it, in any event....

My LKV has a switch which gives me the 1 & 2 raises plus the whole tone 7 raise in one position, so count me in too, at least around half of the time! Personally, I definitely prefer doing vertical moves that either let me pivot my foot on the ground or on the pedals, rather than having to lift ...

Lane Gray wrote:...but I will have to teach the C6th neck the words, as it wants to hum a lot.

Thank you, Lane, for making me laugh out loud on that one!

Both - Steve Howe played a Sho-Bud rather prominently on "To Be Over" from Relayer , and somewhat more obscurely in the intro and outro of "Awaken" from Going For The One , with heavy phasing and echo for a very atmospheric effect. Not to mention his heavy use of non-pedal steel ...

He was my hero when I played bass. I spent a lot of time trying to approximate his trebly Rickenbacker tone (with very mixed results). Godspeed Mr Squire....