For various reasons it was a smaller group than usual which gathered. Both Michel Rose and Tomi Graso were unable to attend, and regular attendee Damien Odell could only spare a short time before dashing off to another appointment.
However Mike Tyne, Nick O'Neill and Ned McIntosh set up their steels, with Kerry Donlon on 5-string bass-guitar and Gary Brown on his Gilet resophonic and an old Bakelite Supro twin-neck console steel.
(L to R) Nick O'Neill, Mike Tyne and Gary start jamming whilst Ned and Kerry set up.
Mike was playing his vintage Sho-Bud S10 which he used when he was on the road with the great Slim Dusty. In passing I must mention two unique aspects of Mike's gear...first his Ernie Ball tone-bar. There's probably close to half a million miles of red Australian outback dust has gone under that bar over the years Mike was on the road with Slim Dusty. The plating might be "a little thin" in places, but under Mike's guiding hand it sounds awesome.
(Above) Mike Tyne's well-weathered tone-bar has seen a lot of miles in its time.
The second aspect is Mike's innovative use of two delay pedals in series. When he engages "overdrive", it's as if Bobbe Seymour has just started playing. Honestly!
(Above) Mike's dual DD3 system for that "Seymour Sound" when you need it.
With three steel-players in a jam it was always going to be a case of musically arriving at one destination by three separate roads, and so it proved to be as we jammed through a variety of steel and country standards. Ned brought his custom-shop Carter, called "Blondie" for obvious reasons.
(Above) Ned seems more than satisfied with Blondie's tone through the NV112
Nick had his Mullen S10 G2 as per usual, again through an NV112. Actually, it was a special day for Nick because on 5th July he hits the big 60...Nick's wife Anne decided to kick off the celebrations a couple of days early so here is the birthday boy complete with cake, blowing out the candles. (Fire regulations prohibited the use of 60 candles. The cake was certainly big enough to handle them though!!)
Speaking of amplifiers, we had a visitor in the form of Mark from Megtronics and he had a prototype solid-state amplifier he's working on and wanted to evaluate for steel-guitars. Operating in class AB, with two 12" speakers it was surprisingly light and had two channels, one for dry and one for effects via a patchable loop. Below are some photographs. It sounded pretty good but Mark reckons with a few tweaks he can improve it. Since Nick's NV112 has the Fox mods, Mark now has a pretty good idea of what we like to hear in a steel amp.
(Above) Mike tries out the prototype "Orbitek" amp
(Above) The prototype from the rear showing the two 12" speakers and patchable impedance plugs.
(Above) The top view of the prototype showing two input channels and temporary labelling.
Finally a group-shot of all the participants. The cake didn't stay looking like that for long because we demolished a good portion of it, leaving enough for Nick to take home to share with neighbours and friends.
(L to R) Mark from Megtronics, Mike Tyne (background), Nick "Birthday Boy" O'Neill, Kerry Donlon, Gary Brown, Ned McIntosh.
A great day, even with a relatively small group. Gary's Supro console steel sounded fantastic so apologies for not getting any photos. Maybe next time? As always, thanks to Nick for getting us all together, and to Ann for feeding us and the impromptu birthday party.
Gary looks remarkably chipper for a dead bloke too !!!!! 
