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[Chris Templeton]

When Jerry Byrd produced his limited edition Frypans with Shot Jackson, there were no more Jerry Byrd frypans to be made.
When I worked for Bobby Seymour at Steel Guitar Nashville, in ’88 or’89, I was given as part pay, a Jerry Byrd Frypan blank (no hardware).
When Sho~Bud went out of business, Bobbe got a hold of the frypan mold and had some poured. I don’t know how many and never heard of another one.
When I returned to Vermont, I glued a fretboard to it and installed a slanted bridge ,a Lawrence Pickup, a volume control, put on some tuners, a jack, and voila, my own Laptop Tapper.
I was in Joe Glaser's shop, in Nashville, around 1990 and he handed me a wide fretboard with guitar frets and asked me If I would like it? He had given it to Paul Franklin who had given it back to him. I took possession of it and headed out west to play dobro for Dan Hicks And His Acoustic Warriors.
In Concord, California, I stopped Tom Bradshaw's, who I had worked for it Scotty's.
I had Paul's fretboard and a Dekley double neck pedal steel. With Tom overseeing things, we put foam under the fretboard at attached it with 6 or 8 Allen screws.
The foam pushed up enough that any fretting didn't push the fretboard down.
When I was in Marin, I got a call to record on a record for Novato Frank at a studio in Cotati .
The track had guitars on it played by a posthumous, John Cipollina .
I had my Laptop Tapper with me, I demoed it, and Frank wanted me to record it on the track!
This a link to the track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dBKATGZXrI

[Donny Hinson]

Doesn't Clinesmith still make their version of the old Rick Frypan?

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[Chris Templeton]

It's beautiful. I want one.
I'm sure Clinesmith has the design thing scoped out.

[Chris Templeton]

...About that Laptop Tapper...I went to visit Dan Tyack at his home outside of Seattle, in the late 90's/early 2000's (I believe he's in Olympia now).
I brought the Laptop Tapper with me and coming back, darn, I dropped it going to the gate at SeaTac and the fretboard came off, shattered the plastic volume control and broke a tuner.
A couple of years later, being the Jerry Byrd fan that I am and since Jerry specified that only a certain number of Jerry Byrd Frypans were to be made, I pitched this illegal one in the dumpster.
What happened next was pretty wild.
A guy fished it out of the dumpster and steeler, Asa Brosius was playing locally and the guy gave it to him!
Asa posted this pic on the forum and my jaw dropped.

The pickup is an E-66, not a Lawrence like I stated before.

[Chris Templeton]

You can close this up-

[Jack Hanson]

Great story. Thanks for posting.