Home Built PSG in Australia

[Bobby D. Jones]

The clear plastic section on the front of the Guitar is interesting. Be a neat place to put a band name. If a female played the guitar They could paint it pink and cover it with butterfly's. Could wear any clothing they wanted to. Bet Donna Hammitt would have loved it.
When I played in Gospel Group BORN AGAIN, I considered covering the front of my steel with a piece of White Naga Hyde With the group name, Attached with ties or snaps for easy removal for travel. So the congergation could not see my legs flopping around under the steel.

[Charley Bond]

That is some machine, which probably makes some great music too. It would certainly pass as an outstanding display of someone's craftsmanship.

There are lots of ideas in this SUPER GUITAR.

Here's a funny... 2-3 posts later, someone is asking about the lightest Pedal Steel Guitar....

[Brad Higgins]

I’m sure that I’m going to get a lot of flak from this next statement but I’m going to say it anyway, those string fingers that Alex made will not work very well. I mistakenly went by an illustration of the all-pull changer mechanism that was in the Winnie Winston, Bill Keith book when I started building my universal. I made string fingers that were virtually identical to Alex’s, and no matter what I did to them, I could NEVER get them to function as well as I liked, they always worked far too hard. I finally wound up copying the string fingers in my MSA, because, and I’ll say it again for any future steel builders out there, the illustration of the all-pull changer in the Winnie Winston book isn't a good design and won’t work very well at all. That’s probably why Alex designed that amazing inversion stand that allowed him to flip his steel over to work on it, he probable couldn't get it to function as well as he would have liked and kept trying to make it work better. Here are some pictures of an MSA all-pull string finger, and this is quite similar to ALL other all-pull string fingers on the market, these should help anyone wanting to build a steel, it's an excellent changer design. If you're going to build a pedal steel just remember, the very heart of a pedal steel guitar is the changer.

[Charlie McDonald]

It's unfortunate that Mr. Robson can't be here to defend his design decisions or verify their source.

I'd love to hear from Mr. Ed Bates, who played the instrument and helped with some adjustments. Anyone in Australia know him?

There must be a hundred ways to build anything. Perhaps an experienced person could comment on Alex's design, and whether it's Winston's.



This statement is kind of specious:

It’s just too bad that Alex never saw his incredible creation become fully functional before his passing, merely because he thought that the information in some book was completely true. That’s probably why he designed the stand that allowed him to flip his steel over to work on it, he couldn’t get it to function right and probable put the blame on his designs when in reality the problem wasn’t any of his designs at all, it was merely the one design that he got from a book.

I find it hard to believe that he built the flip stand because he couldn't get it to work. The post is the first I'd read in the thread that indicated that the guitar isn't fully functional or that Winnie Winston was just plain wrong.

[Doug Beaumier]

Alex never said anything about the guitar not working properly. I do know that he had my E9 song book, and he said he was learning some of the songs in it, so I assume the guitar worked as it should.

[Brad Higgins]

Alex never said anything about the guitar not working properly. I do know that he had my E9 song book, and he said he was learning some of the songs in it, so I assume the guitar worked as it should.

Thanks Doug, that’s good to know, and I’ll edit my last post. One other thing I will say, is that my first string fingers, (the ones just like Alex’s) did work, just not very well at all, especially the raises, which made it extremely hard to push the pedals. The lowers worked a bit better, but I had to use heavier return springs because of where the raises pulled from. When you saw my homebuilt universal in Mass it had the original string fingers (just like Alex's)but with extra levers added to each finger to increase leverage on the raises, but the pedals had far too much travel so I just copied my MSA changer and that works great.

[Doug Beaumier]

Brad, I remember seeing your pedal steel guitar, although the memory is vague because it was about 30 years ago!

[Brad Higgins]

That was even before my wife had a case specially made for it, you probably didn't see, but at that time I was carrying it around in a cardboard box.

[Brad Higgins]

[quote="Charlie McDonald"]It's unfortunate that Mr. Robson can't be here to defend his design decisions or verify their source.

I'd love to hear from Mr. Ed Bates, who played the instrument and helped with some adjustments. Anyone in Australia know him?

There must be a hundred ways to build anything. Perhaps an experienced person could comment on Alex's design, and whether it's Winston's.

I’ll make this final post Charlie because you obviously completely misunderstood the meaning of my original post. I have absolutely nothing but the highest respect for Alex’s creativity and craftsmanship in creating such an incredible instrument, it just looked like Alex went through the exact same frustration with his changer as I did with mine, which was exactly like the one illustrated in the Winnie Winston book. Oh and Charlie, don’t take me wrong there either, IMO, that’s probably the best steel guitar book that was EVER published, but that one particular illustration was practically worthless, especially if you ever plan on building yourself a pedal steel guitar.

Charlie, maybe if you spent a few hundred hours handcrafting string fingers that didn’t work properly because of a p-ss poor design that you got from a book as I did, you would also want to share your story, in the hopes that you might be able to prevent someone else from all of the wasted time and frustration that you went through.

[Andy DePaule]

Chris Said "All guitars should be purple".
One of the 4 we are doing is that color.
It will be Denny's PSG, but not yet finished.
However he left the body in the garage during the cold winter and the lacquer got cracks so he has to do it over.
We had not seen the one in this thread, so when Denny said he had done his purple and black I thought, yuck. Then I saw it and fell in love.

[Brad Higgins]

Chris Said "All guitars should be purple".
One of the 4 we are doing is that color.
It will be Denny's PSG, but not yet finished.
However he left the body in the garage during the cold winter and the lacquer got cracks so he has to do it over.
We had not seen the one in this thread, so when Denny said he had done his purple and black I thought, yuck. Then I saw it and fell in love.

What incredible flame!!!!!

[Andy DePaule]

It's Quilted Maple.
We were lucky and found a board large enough for three steels and some left over.
It was at a local lumber yard so it was less that $200.00 for the whole board.
Went back for more but it was all gone quickly.
Fantastic wood.
Thanks,
Andy

[Doug Beaumier]

This thread is perfect for the new Builder's Corner section!

[Chris Sattler]

I have often wondered what happened to this guitar. It has to be somewhere.