Fender/Shobud bargain or not ?

[Alan Brookes]

I spent a couple of hours playing it yesterday evening. I'm beginning to like it. It holds its tuning well, and the pedals and knee levers work accurately. One feature I like is that the foot pedals have an adjustment on the pedal rack to allow them to slide sideways to a comfortable position. I don't know whether I have different proportions than most steelers, but I always find that, on most PSGs, the position of the pedals when they leave the factory is too far to the left.

[Alan Brookes]

I've been playing this guitar for nearly a year now, and the more I play it the more I like it. It's become my workaday E9 machine and I leave it permanently set up in my den.

[Keith Murrow]

Alan, did you end up doing any mods or replacing any parts to get it set up the way you wanted?

Have you gotten used to the tone of the pickup?

[Alan Brookes]

I moved the pedals to the left, which is a simple adjustment on this instrument. I haven't replaced the pickup, although I have been considering it. I can get rid of most of the "metallic" sound by adjusting the tone controls on my amplifier.

[Frank Parish]

I bought one of these guitar for my ex's son to learn on. I payed about $400 for it best I remember and it's the lightest guitar I ever saw with ten strings. It doesn't stay in tune at all and lowers the 2nd and 8th strings on the one knee lever. The pedals are the usual ABC pedals. I kinda like the tone if you were playing in a rock group or rockabilly. I think if it had a better changer it might be ok and it's darn sure easy to take anywhere.

[Storm Rosson]

That looks like a good bargain imho , I would have went for it

[Dave Zirbel]

Hey Alan, I just picked up a double 10 Fender Artist, all original. I love it! double /raise, double lower. Plays and sounds great. Needs a little polishing and new strings but it's definitely gig worthy. The sound reminds me of Mooney's sound when he played the ShoBuds. He had his pickups custom wound to a lower resistance. The pickups are not stock super pro.

[Alan Brookes]

Dave, I don't think you'll regret it. Four years on I'm still happy with mine. I have quite a number of pedal steels, but this has become my day-to-day working instrument. In fact, I only have two pedal steels permanently set up; this and a ShoBud Crossover. I guess I'm addicted to Sho-Buds, as you can see from my avatar.

[Donny Hinson]

Aside from the tuning pan and the Fender amp nameplate, I never did see these much as a "Fender". They sounded and played fine, but they just sorta struck me kinda strange...the same way as the old Cadillac Cimmaron (which was essentially just a "rebadged" Chevy Cavalier).

[Dave Zirbel]

Donny, along with the tuning pan these guitars have the floating rocking cam fingers and a low impedance pickup. To my ears and having played some shobuds for over a decade it has characteristics of both Fender and ShoBud, tonally speaking...

[Jerry Cobetto]

I recently purchased a mahogany-finished Fender Artist D-10 from Billy Cooper's shop in VA. It is a very nice guitar! [For years, I've always wanted a Sho-Bud AND a Fender pedal steel, along with the Miller that I've had for many years, and NOW I have one of each!] I love the guitar! As any of you are very much aware, Sho-Bud was contracted by Fender to make them (i.e., basically, a Sho-Bud undercarriage with a Fender body, neck, changers and ash-tray tuning key heads). My basic question is, what year(s) were those guitars made? I've read were Sho-Bud was contracted by Fender to make those guitars in the early 70's, but, according to Bobbe Seymour, David Jackson (I think it was) made 4,400 of them primarily in 1976. If, indeed, though, they were made for more than one year, what years were they made? In other words, what year were the first ones made, and what year were the last ones made? Which serial numbers match up with which year(s)? As much research as I've done on those Fender steels, I can never find exact manufacturing dates! I'm a very curious individual, and I always strive to be exact (or as close as possible) on the manufacturing dates of my instruments. Thanks for indulging me!

[Alan Brookes]

Five years after buying mine it has become my main instrument. I play it every day. It's almost become part of me. As I watch the television in the evenings it's in front of me, and I even play along with the commercials.

[basilh]

Still playing it Alan ?

[Greg Lambert]

Sho-Bud built 4400 guitars for Fender between 1976 and 1977 (3 shifts working 7 days a week) The top of the range was The Artist Dual Pro D10 (8 + 4) followed by the Artist S10 (3 + 4) and then the Fender Student S10 with 3 + 1. Two colors available Black and Mahogany Lacquer. I have a D10 in "AS NEW" condition. When I bought it,it was missing the pedal rack, as the previous owner bought it as a stand up steel and never used the pedals, and somewhere along the way the pedal rack was mislayed. Anyway, Jeff Seratt of Show-Pro guitars made a new pedal rack for me , and it looks and works great, much nicer than the original.

I had one like this in the early 80's. Great guitar. I ended up replacing all of the knee levers because they broke. The amazing thing about this guitar is that the entire time I owned it , I never broke a string.

[Alan Brookes]

Still playing it Alan ?

Yep. Over the last few months I've sold a Fender 400, a Sho-Bud Fingertip, a Sho-Bud Crossover, a Miller D10, a Carter Starter and a Thomas U12, plus several non-pedal steels, but this one remains, together with a Sho-Bud Crossover, set up permanently in my den and played most days. I wouldn't part with either of them, even though, for financial reasons, I'm severely thinning down my collection of instruments.