The Steel Guitar Forum

I suspect that it is the pickup, but many ZB players swear by ZB pickups. I posted the pictures to see if anybody thinks that the pickup is not stock.

I have had a ZB Custom sitting around here for a few years and am putting it in playing shape. I'm getting clues that this ZB may have been altered. First there is only one knee lever, but two unused holes for additional ones. Second, the pickup is extremely microphonic. It picks up all the pedal no...

Theory first puts names and labels on things you've been hearing and doing for years. From there you can communicate better with other musicians and you can understand newer ideas that might have seemed beyond your grasp before. This is what I found when I began to understand theory. It also opens ...

I have a Multi Kord too, and have crumbling tuner knobs. Which knobs do you order from Stewart McDonald? There are several types. I used the cheap white button type for one Multi-Kord and made my own out of 1/4" Plexiglass for the other. The covers on the guitar hide the tuners anyway, so go c...

I've got a couple of them and the one you have with the "mama button" is a later version and has the string through pickup. If you ever take the pickup apart be sure not to change the magnet direction. They are not fastened except for the tension of the two screws. I removed the tuning gea...

I have used Lignum Vitae for a compensated bridge and also for the nut on an archtop guitar and it was an improvement over the rosewood bridge and plastic nut. Has anyone tried this wood for a resonator bridge? I have some in the shop and was thinking about making new bridges for my Regal.

I have found that Peter is correct about string spacing. The 7/16" string spacing makes a big difference in keeping 3 string slants in tune. I have an old Multi-Kord with 7/16" spacing and a 23" scale length. It is the most accurate of my steel guitars for slants. The scale length mak...

If you only want to learn one tuning then it has to be C6th CEGACE (low to high). Jerry Byrd's lessons are available for this tuning as well as others. I have even used it for "pedal to the metal" blues. I love the "Island Sound" and sneak it in all the time including Bluegrass o...

It's a ZB "student" model. That's what the 'S' in the serial number stands for. It was an economy model kind of like the Sho-Bud Mustang. The Emmons company also came out with a student model around that time that was a real POS. Why a vertical lever? An "up" lever is usually no...

I got this one on eBay and it seems stock except for one of the pedal holes looks as if a pedal was there at one time. The serial is 289S. The setup is standard ABC pedals and E to Eb on the knee lever. There are 3 holes for knee levers and I was wondering if it's possible to add a horizontal and ve...

George Rout wrote:
And now to Tom, if it wasn't for the Summer issue of the HSGA Quarterly in which they mention Lani McIntire played with Jimmy Rogers and they have Jimmy's picture there, I wouldn't win first prize to the question.

Geo

If anyone would know it would be the HGSA. Thanks George!

Was it not Lani McIntire who played on Jimmy Rogers' records??

George

That's what I thought at first but someone told me it was Dick McIntire.

I can't get enough of Jerry Byrd and this is one tune I don't have. I heard somewhere that he had his pedal wired so that the volume increased as he rocked the pedal back. Do you know if that's true?

Dick McIntire and His Harmony Hawaiians were the backup band for Bing Crosby's Hawaiian album. It was that album (an actual album of 78 RPM records) that peaked my interest in the Hawaiian guitar. I later found some Jerry Byrd 78's in a Salvation Army in Detroit and I was hooked. I believe it was Di...

Years ago I realized what Jerry Byrd was doing to get those minor chord slants and ground one end of a Stevens Steel to a semi-bullet. I use it on my National Tri-cone, Regal Dobro and the Muti-Kord. The exposed brass (from the grinding and polishing) doesn't seem to affect the sustain very much. I ...

Don't forget Dick McIntyre.

If you are going to use the passive tone control circuit then it is a good idea to run the leads for the capacitor out of the guitar so you can experiment with different capacitors to get the sound you want. Try caps with values from .01 to .05 mf and see which one sounds best and try different type...

George is correct about the tone being in the hands and how you attack the strings. A passive tone control grounds a specific frequencies to ground and you lose a lot with this old time circuitry. Today we have amps with active tone circuits and equalizer pedals to give us a greater tonal range than...

Joe Blount wrote:Does anyone around Toledo Ohio know Jess Hurt and is he still playing?

He sure is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRXxxNKtUuc

I took this video a while ago and I saw Jess last Thursday at the same place. When I see him next I'll see if he has an email address I can forward.

You get a great tone out of that reso and your intonation is spot on.

The best lubrication products I have found are made by Kano Laboratories in Nashville. Their Microil is the best oil for fine lubrication. From their website http://www.kanolabs.com/ Precision Instrument Lubricant - Resists Gumming 
Super refined - precision instrument oil. For lubricating delicate ...

You older steelers probably remember WLAC Nashville 1510 on your AM dial. We could get that as far north as Detroit. While local stations were playing Pat Boone we were listening to Howlin' Wolf. The word passed around that there was a "cool" radio station at 1510 AM and kids were hearing ...

Tom's guitar looks amazingly like my Walters guitar-- http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=190131 The C6 pickup, the changer, the ShoBud looking pedals, the woodwork. It all looks very similar. If you look at the inside of the Gumby peghead, they're really similar too. Smooth, not stepped...

Reso with Bluegrass - Thumbpick & 2 Fingerpicks (need the volume) Reso at home - Thumbpick and 3 fingers (easier to block strings) Lap Steel C6 - Thumbpick or the strings buzz and sometimes 2 Fingerpicks Telecaster & Les Paul - Fender heavy flatpick and middle and index fingers(no picks) - S...

In case you thought the $40 was for the band.