Tone bars - everything you know is wrong.

Curt Langston · Post by **Curt Langston** » 6 Aug 2006 6:16 pm

Some slide guitarists still favor the old glass "Coricidin bottle" as a slide, and even though it's fairly light and hollow, it still offers considerable sustain.

Donny, is the sustain due to the "hardness"(glass density) of the Coricidin bottle? Since it cannot be due to the weight.

Here's what the folks at John Pearse say about their Thermocryonic bars:

A totally new kind of tone bar. Carved from an ingot of highest quality 440 stainless steel, each bar is heat treated to 60 Rockwell hardness before being cryogenically frozen to -300 degrees to remove all construction stresses. Experience unbelieveable sustain!

And even goes as far to say:

A friend of ours at the "Grand Old Opry" started using one of our bars on his pedal steel. All the other steel players were trying to figure out what it was that he had changed in his steel to so improve the sound...and he told them! It is the John Pearse® Big Daddy™!

Is this just hype? It appears that they are promoting the heavier bar, with increased hardness (and I suspect denser) for increased sustain? I have been wanting to try one. Opinions needed.[This message was edited by Curt Langston on 06 August 2006 at 07:47 PM.]

Bobby Lee · Post by **Bobby Lee** » 6 Aug 2006 8:48 pm

I use a B.J.S. 15/16 bar most of the time. One hour of playing with the wrong bar and the bass player never turned to me and said I was using the wrong bar! The owner never noticed or the 200 people never noticed AND I never noticed! MY POINT--does it really make a difference what bar we use? Is it super hearing steel players that can hear the difference?

With all due respect, Joe, the difference in sound between an Ernie Ball bar and a BJS is negligible. They are made of very similar materials. They feel different in the hand, though, and that's important to the player.

The difference between plexiglass and steel is another matter. In addition to difference in weight and drag, the two materials produce different tones and one sustains the notes longer than the other. It doesn't take super hearing to notice this.

I can get away with using my Shubb for country or my BJS for blues because they're quite similar in tone. The main difference is how they feel in the hand. I wouldn't try to play the slow country ballad style with plexi or bakelite, though, because even if the tone worked, the sustain I would want just isn't there.

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<img align=right src="http://b0b.com/b0b2005.gif" width="78 height="78">Bobby Lee (a.k.a. b0b) - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs, Open Hearts
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Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 6 Aug 2006 10:26 pm

Sammy Gibson always told me that you need a bar
that is heavy enuff to create some sustain, but not too heavey to crimp your style.

It's a toss up. When I was clunking along, me and Sammy sat around his machine shop and tried to straighten out the world one day. He said "Chipper, let me give you one of MY great steel bars." You do need this bar, size and weight-wise.

This took place about 4-5 years ago, after Sammy read some previous posts on the Forum about this very issue.

He got pissed, and said to me, I'll make a steel bar that no one can touch. He was right.

Ask any Forum members here, like Doug Beaumier, Jim Smith, Joe Casey, Leigh Howell,
as to the prowess of Sammy Gibson.

Sammy is not only a terrific steeler, but is a class one machinist. Sammy is continually hired by Jerry Fessenden to make parts for Fessenden Guitars. The man is real.

Sammy has worked in a subcontracter capacity for many high-tech companies like Pratt & Whitney, Boeing, Colt, and Smith & Wesson over the years - just to name a few.

I love the cat. He knows his stuff.

Mike Perlowin · Post by **Mike Perlowin** » 7 Aug 2006 3:48 am

I have a John Pearse Thermocryonic bar, as well as a BJS. The Pearse bar seems to produce a sound that's a tiny tad brighter, but the difference between the 2 is really negligable. If I didn"t have a zirconia bar I'd be perfectly happy with either one.

It is a very good bar, as is the BJS.

I collect bars and have about 50 of them, but the one I actually use is the zirc.

However, on my current recording project, there's a piece with a recurring slide on the 12 string from the 3rd to the 5th fret, and the zirc bar made some surface noise from the heavy wondings of the string. I tried several different bars, and found that the Red Rajah was the quietest.

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 7 Aug 2006 5:03 am

"Spam spam spam spam spam..."

Did anyone ever try carbonitriding a bar blank? Gives a superhard surface.

How's about a piece of Thompson shafting, i.e. case hardened stuff?

Is there any correlation between bar surface Rockwell hardness and tone? Is there a preferred surface hardness?

ed packard · Post by **ed packard** » 7 Aug 2006 6:06 am

There are a number of "processes" that can be applied to bars that have not made the headlines. Ray has touched on some of them, and the cryogenics has been mentioned.

There is a process that will impregnate the surface of steel (and other?) for a few milliinches with Teflon. It makes very slickery surface, stays, and does not appear to wear. The La La land police had this done to the mechanisms of their pistolas to make them hair triggered. Uses Chlorine gas.

If I was to try to make a another space age bar (the Zirc being the first), I would try DLC = diamond like carbon as a coating. It is a vacuum process. DLC is used as scratch protection on eye glasses, and was/is used for smoothness, and wear protection on the hard discs in hard disc drives.

Abrasion resistance is right up there, or maybe higher than hardness for me. Hardness is a penetration type measurement. It works differently on different grain sizes/shapes. If I don't drop the bar, penetration should not be an issue...scratch is. The ceramics like Zirc are usually hardness rated in Knoop.

Hardness beats density (think weight) as a criteria, as steel beats lead. Hard surfaces make for greater string noise, as does surface roughness.

Sustain can be artificially created by sliding the bar...to the degree that the bar is not smooth. One of the Nashville greats called me after getting his Zirc bar with this "problem": "The Zirc seems to have less sustain above the 12th fret". He was playing with no amp attached. This experiment was tried...without moving the bar about, compare the sustain of the metal bar and the Zirc. The result was that the smoother Zirc bar did not treat the string(s) with the same amount of violin bow excitation as the metal bar....so some of the "sustain" was caused by sliding the bar against the string.

I looked at the string noise caused by the sliding bar(s) with FSA. Jim P may do some of this evaluation as he is now set up with the FSA capability. I'm going fishing.

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 7 Aug 2006 6:57 am

Just a minor point about the bar weight issue. With a handheld bar, we have different issues than immovable bridges and bodies. Mass does matter up to a point, because it imcreases stability. If you lay a lipstick cover on top of the strings (no hands) it will have less sustain than a solid bar of the same material. To some extent, pressing the tube down with the hand will improve the sustain. So the extra weight of a heavy bar simply takes over for the hands and applies a little more pressure to the strings. So weight or mass does matter for sustain, but only if the same material is being compared. Of course lead is heavy but soft. Likewise, a water balloon will not have much sustain, even if you use heavy water.

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Student of the Steel: Zum uni, Fender tube amps, squareneck and roundneck resos, tenor sax, keyboards

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 7 Aug 2006 7:52 am

I said that all else being equal, sustain is a function of weight - if you take different bars of equal length and diameter, held motionless with equal pressure, the one made out of the heavier (denser) material will sustain longer, proportional to weight. I'm not sure if it's a straight linear proportion. I do think there are damping issues when you mate two or more materials, i.e. sinking a big brass block into a light Stratocaster body seems to absorb sustain rather than create it. If you look at an old Stratocaster with the funky little bent-metal bridge pieces, mounted to a bent-metal plate suspended on springs, you'd think it shouldn't sustain at all - electric b@njo - but the proportions of mass work well, due to Fender's experimentation (and maybe some luck).

The two qualities I've been looking at on the plastics are Rockwell harness and density. The lack of hardness of the plastics takes some of the extreme high-end treble whine or bite out of the sound - this is preferable to some people, not to others. The density is the weight per given volume, which is why you can make a big grippy plastic bar that still only weighs a fast 4 oz. For the purposes of the kinds of music I like to play, the steel guitar has plenty of sustain with a light bar - I just don't need to hold whole notes for four seconds, very few types of music do call for that. Speedy West, Joaquin Murphy, Alvino Rey, Jerry Byrd managed to scrape through with light bars....

The delrin is both denser and softer than the acrylic or the MDS nylon, hence it sustains a bit better per given size but has an even warmer (less treble) sound - very useful for overdriven rock tone. I also suspect that there's less transmission along the bar between strings, so that there's less clash of upper harmonics among different notes when using overdrive - this is just a conjectural, unmeasured suspicion of mine at this point.

I think the reason that Coricidian bottle sounds so warm is that the glass is hard, but it's so light that the meat of the finger under the slide absorbs some of the fastest, higher vibrations immediately - again a somewhat lucky conjunction. As b0bby Lee mentioned, a lot of amps add compression, so "measuring" sustain with a revved-up tube amp, or a Peavey with it's automatic "DDT" compression gets pretty iffy. Also, the human brain naturally "compresses" sounds - you internally mute the louder ones and concentrate on hearing the softer, dying ones - so I think the "stopwatch test" is fraught with room for opinion-fueled error. We hear what we want to?

There is still much hard scientific research that could be done in this area, but then - what would we have to argue about?

[This message was edited by David Mason on 07 August 2006 at 09:01 AM.]

Jerry Hayes · Post by **Jerry Hayes** » 7 Aug 2006 2:37 pm

I can't believe this post has went on as long as it has! I'm a very un-techical player as far as equipment goes. I just use a standard 7/8" BJS bar which does everything I need it to do and sounds great. For years I used the old Emmons SS bar which sounded just about the same. In short, the vast majority of top players don't use Zirc? or whatever steel guitar bars, and the best and most famous steel guitar instrumentals and rides have all been played with a Steel (stainless or otherwise) or chrome plated 7/8" bar. Whatever you use, you'll wind up sounding like you, whether that's good or not I don't know.......JH in Va.

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Don't matter who's in Austin (or anywhere else) Ralph Mooney is still the king!!!

Bruce Clarke · Post by **Bruce Clarke** » 8 Aug 2006 10:12 am

To Billy Wilson, still no info about bronze bars! Am I the only player using one? Do I record my U12? Now and then, as follows. I am a pianist/arranger, no longer working professionally, but using computer software such as Cubase, Garritan personal orchestra, a soundfont collection, Steinberg B4 Hammond etc. I can multitrack from two instruments up to full band or orchestra.
My steel playing is unremarkable, so I use it as another orchestral voice, much as Alvino Rey used to do I suppose.

ed packard · Post by **ed packard** » 8 Aug 2006 11:42 am

Hey Jerry H...There were less than 160 Zirc bars ever made, and these were mostly sold at the conventions/shows...I think that you will find some on your "top player" list that have one, say Ralph Mooney for instance? He still sounds like the Moon though.

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 8 Aug 2006 12:46 pm

Just for laughs {ha-ha} - many years ago when I was on the road with Joe King & The Lost Posse,
our tour finally brought us to Nashville [Joe retained a manager/agent in Nashville and he set up the tour - we were all based in Seattle -Bainbridge Island - and it was my 1st time to Nashville].

We were there for a week and we all hung out at the bar at the Best Western, right down from the Hall Of Fame. It was the place to be seen and heard at the time [even got smashed one night with "Alabama"].

But. To the point - The house band had a steeler by the name of Jim Vest. Jim, not surprisingly, was just excellent. But as I kept checking things out, I finally noticed Jim's bar. If you can imagine the old "Stevens" dobro bar as a solid cylinder, instead of the lateral grooves on the topside, then that would be the size of Jim's bar.

I said to myself, "how does he get such a sound and sustain from such a "teeny" bar?"

I never did find out. But he was just even more incredible in my eyes after seeing that bar. I was well aware at this time in my learning curve the difference mass has in your sustain; and even tried a Stevens dobro bar myself. I sure couldn't make it ring and sustain like Jim could.

I had to post this, cause it just knocked me out; and figured, what the hay, why not throw in another monkey wrench.

Just for laughs.[This message was edited by CHIP FOSSA on 08 August 2006 at 01:47 PM.]

Jim Sliff · Post by **Jim Sliff** » 8 Aug 2006 3:34 pm

What Chip says is interesting.

Jim Palenscar could make any of those bars sustain like a steel bar, or at least close enough you culd use one and no one would notice (the Delrin and moly could have passed a blindfold test). One of the other guys there got a good sound, but not sustain. I have no problem with sustain or sound. So a lot may depend on the player.

As far as "mass" - I think it depends on how you're defining "mass". If you are thinking "weight" then it's not relevant, because all these big bars are VERY light. I'm talking less than half the weight of a 7/8 steel bar.

All I can really say is I was initially surprised by the Acrylic - and we ALL were knocked out by the moly, especially. It looked and somehow just "seemed" wrong...but the sound and feel were something else. You could play "slow country ballads" on one for days and no one would be the wiser, except you might be asked how you were getting that warm, fat tone?

Fun stuff to play with.

And FWIW I've used an original Coricidin bottle for slide for years. Scraped the label off myself. And they sound NOTHING like the "imitation" or "reissue" bottles (which are quite harsh IMO), which are just glass slides. The real ones are a different glass, and they look quite different side-by-side.

A brass tone bar sounds interesting - I'd love to hear one. The zirconium also is enticing....but out of my price range, unfortunately.

Curt Langston · Post by **Curt Langston** » 8 Aug 2006 4:14 pm

However, on my current recording project, there's a piece with a recurring slide on the 12 string from the 3rd to the 5th fret, and the zirc bar made some surface noise from the heavy wondings of the string.

Mike, I was wondering if that would happen.

Donny Hinson · Post by **Donny Hinson** » 13 Aug 2006 2:10 pm

Hardness, size, mass, and even the radius all play a part in each bar's function and particular sound. But for most players and guitars and average band situations, the gamut of "acceptable" bar parameters is pretty broad indeed.

When you're talking about the "sustain" of a particular bar, you also have to talk about the guitar itself, and the playing style. For example, the old cable Fenders were never particularly noted for their sustain. Compared to a modern guitar (or even an old p/p for that matter), they're pretty low in the sustain department. Also, some players (most notably, guys like Ralph Mooney and Pete Kleinow), don't play a style that demands a lot of sustain. So, when using a Fender PSG, or when playing "Mooney-type" licks, just about anything will work fine for a bar...sustain isn't a key element. There'll be sonic differences in the tone and attack, but you'll still have sufficient sustain with most any bar you might use. Differences you might easily hear playing in a studio or in your own home are often completely obliterated when you're playing out somewhere with a live band.

Jim Sliff · Post by **Jim Sliff** » 13 Aug 2006 4:16 pm

"Differences you might easily hear playing in a studio or in your own home are often completely obliterated when you're playing out somewhere with a live band."

Absolutely true - I've sen "test data" blown out of the water by live band use. The mix with a band is totally different than the sound practicing.

Fooling with the bars down at Jims was interesting, bcase I WAS only using them on Fenders - although mine seem quite odd (and different from my first 400), having quite a bit more sustain than anticipated. My 400 with the twin pickups and modified electronics could be one reason - and the 1000 is as loud without an amp as a cheap acoustic guitar - so they both may be anomalies and I ust got lucky. We got petty much identical results on more "normal" guitars at Jim's, but agin, my Fenders may be "different".

Dean Parks has one of the acrylics out of the group now, and his initial take was it was almost the same as steel on a Fender, and close on his Fessy until you get up to the high strings, where the sustain starts to drop a bit. But as I recall he said he was running low volume and not a normal amp setup, so he's going to do more analysis.

As Donny notes, in many situations the differences in sound would be minimal - wherein to me lies the big advantages : 1) size - the larger bars are much more comfortable and easier to control (for me), and 2) weight, as the big synthetics are very light and can be moved very quickly and precisely from fret to fret.

No, they're not traditional. So what? They sound good, are fun to play with, fast, comfy and give a nice change of pace. I was saving some money to have a large BJS made, but I'm sort of reluctant to spend the money now that I have these - never having played a BJS, and with my current steel bar experience, I'm afraid there would be far too much top end. Soemthing I need to think about, so I'm glad I didn't place an order yet.

David told me the Delrin would grow on me, and now I think it may be the best overall - sustain is there, it's light, and it's huge. I still like the acrylic for general playing, and the nylon/moly when I want the sound a tad warmer.

Interestingly, after playing with these for a while the steel bars (a couple Dunlops and a "Twister") sound "tinny" and have unwanted high-end overtones. I'm going to rest them for a while, come back in a month or so and see if that's still my perception.

In all the talk about the zirc bars, I'm still unclear as to what they are supposed to do differently from a steel bar. Can someone clarify?

Mike Perlowin · Post by **Mike Perlowin** » 13 Aug 2006 6:36 pm

In all the talk about the zirc bars, I'm still unclear as to what they are supposed to do differently from a steel bar. Can someone clarify?

1st, they're white and look really cool.

2nd, they glide over the strings with no friction. You don't realize how much friction a steel bar has until you try one of these bars and experience the difference.

3rd, they're white and look really cool.

4th, they change the envelope of the note, accenting the attack in such a way that the notes are cleaner sounding. My wife, who is not a musician, is able to hear the difference between the sound of my zirc bar and a steel one.

5th, they're white and look really cool.

I collect bars and have about 50 of them, including some other very good ones (BJS, Pearse cryothermic, George L, Dunlop etc) but the zirc bar is the one I actually use. In addition to the things I mentioned, it has some indefinable quality that the others lack.

plus, they're white and look really cool.

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Mitch Ellis · Post by **Mitch Ellis** » 13 Aug 2006 7:02 pm

I've never seen a zirc bar, but I'd guess that they are white and look really cool.

Bobby Lee · Post by **Bobby Lee** » 13 Aug 2006 7:14 pm

I have one. It's white and looks really cool.

Mike Perlowin · Post by **Mike Perlowin** » 13 Aug 2006 7:45 pm

Jim Sliff · Post by **Jim Sliff** » 13 Aug 2006 8:23 pm

Wow - I'm stoked. With the Delrin, at least I have the "cool" factor nailed!

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 14 Aug 2006 2:38 am

The Delrin and acrylic rod stocks are available in a pretty wide variety of solid and translucent colors.

($)-> If you are really willing to spend $250 for a zircon bar just because it "looks cool", please note that I could make you a mystic-emerald bar, or a royal-purple bar, or a spooky-blue one, for a whole lot less than that. How about a pink one, to show the girls you're sensitive? Red to match your Corvette, green to match your Irish eyes. Orange, to match your teeth.... Maybe the black ones sound better? Hell, send me $250 and I'll surprise you....

P.S. (It would surprise me, too

)[This message was edited by David Mason on 14 August 2006 at 11:17 PM.]

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 14 Aug 2006 8:14 am

I just got 4 rollers out of one great big @$$ed roller bearing. 2-3/4" long, 1-3/16" dia. Make a great "medicine" bar for a six stringer...

Bobby Lee · Post by **Bobby Lee** » 14 Aug 2006 8:24 am

Brint Hannay · Post by **Brint Hannay** » 14 Aug 2006 9:02 am

ENTIRELY FACETIOUS POST ALERT:

So b0b, are you going to change the name to The Steel or Delrin or Zirc or Acrylic or Hard-Boiled Egg Guitar Forum?[This message was edited by Brint Hannay on 14 August 2006 at 10:04 AM.]