As far as maintenance:
Keep it clean, lubed and tightened!
Take off all the strings and polish it like you're detailing a Ferrari!
Just clean around the keyhead, leave it to a professional to take it apart.
Mark Daniels wrote:...and a bar with a mystery 'ZB' on the bottom
Well it's been a while since I posted here but sometimes life gets in the way!
I have been dealing with an illness called M.E./CFS for 5 years now and I was looking forward to learning the steel when I bought it.
Unfortunately, I was over-prescribed painkillers and other drugs and spent most of post-psg-buying 2010 coming off them with all manner of side effects.This year hasn't been great either and the steel sat in it's case.
However, I am still determined to learn this instrument, so I moved around my music room (2nd bedroom really but music room sounds grander!) so the steel could be fully assembled all of the time.
I'm now going through the painful first steps of steel including tuning and using fingerpicks which feel real strange.
So apologies to those in the forum who were kind enough to offer help during my false start on steel. Your help was, and still is, much appreciated. I really didn't want to seem ungracious or rude, but it was a real rough time.
I started PSG on a Lil Buddy myself.
For the crucial right hand stuff, it's totally adequate; for the left hand technique it's okay, but rather thin sounding, esp. on the 3rd string.
The pedals are creaky but servicable, and you can learn how to tune them (in the "Emmons" style, if I remember correctly -it's in the Winston book)
I don't think it's worth putting $$ into adding more levers, though they certainly are a valuable next step
I played the heck out of my Lil Buddy (sounding pretty bad I'm sure) then upgraded and passed it along to another newbie
there are lots of threads here about "next step PSGs" so I won't make any suggestions
If you can use the Lil Buddy to learn the RH grips and rolling patterns, and maybe even a few songs, it will have served you well
having said that, I boldly predict that someday you will sit at your pro level steel, look back and think, "how did I ever play that **&**!"
enjoy!
The Little Buddy hasn't been too bad tuning-wise. I have a Stroboflip as a guitar tuner anyway and, even though the first real tuning session was a struggle, things have become easier.
It is fun looking at the setups people have on here and thinking what I would get if I won the lottery (someone in tbe UK won £101 million last week on the European-wide lottery!). There is such a wide variety of approaches and I have plenty of time thinking what to get when I'm ready.
By the way the bass is a 7 string Offset Flamboyant from www.seibass.com in London. Each bass is made to order and I wanted one for 12 years before I could actually order one. My spec included a lacewood top and back and the bass took a year to make.
