The Steel Guitar Forum

In the late eighties, Cowboy Eddie Long played a Sierra with Hank Williams Jr and played a Sierra until switching to BMI. I rented a Sierra Artist S-10 before I officially started playin' steel to see if I could handle it. Joe Wright's current Sierra features his initials, JW on the front.

Brett

Yeah Brett!!, and Joe isn't just a monster player, he's funny as hell!!

...... s/n D12-251-8it was built by Harlow Manufacturing Gresham oregon i took delivery in 78

Harley James or I might have built that guitar. I started working at Sierra in late 77, right after Ben Harlow & Chuck Wright sold the company to Don Christianson. It looks like it was built around the time we moved from Gresham to Portland.

Well Paul, did you buy one??...Sierra has been around since the 60's...it is a Rock Solid guitar, Sierra has been quite for the past few years, but if you put you ear to the ground, you might hear something new might be coming...in the near further...Thank's to all you great comments in this post...

I have found thought the years that either you loved a Sierra or didn't, I fell it was it's looks, the one Great thing about Sierra, was it's looks, you could spot it right off, square legs, the shape of the body, my Dad was one of the first to anodize parts on the steel, Black & Gold was my favorite, Very few changes were made to the guitar after My Dad designed it, Don did a Great job with the company, and made a few changes thought the years..all were good...funny story, when Don changed the size of the pull rods to a smaller size, The very first on went to a old friend of my Dad's in Or,he was not happy, seems the rods made noise when he hit a pedal, he drove it right to my Dad, in Ca, Dad looked it over, and put shrink tubing on all the rods, quite as a church mouse, well, the owner went right to Don and showed him how it got fixed, well, all Sierras got the shrink tube after that...My Dad is 85 now, and living a quite life in Orland Ca, we talk al the time, and still remembers a lot about his many years building steels, he devoted a Great part of his life to building and designing steel guitar, but yet has really never gotten the recognition He de-severs..O well one day it might happen, I just hope he's stil here to enjoy the recognition...1947 to 1978.....Long live the Wright/Sierra name...

Just want to thank Don & Sue for the great years they spent doing a Great job keeping the Sierras name alive, I had a 10 year run with them, and loved every minute with them, due to health reasons with Sue, they sold Sierra to a guy that was a fu#$%^@ mor~On, and drove it in the ground in a year, it was then bought by Ed Littlefield, and save Tom Bakers loyal years with Don and Sue,

Tom Baker, words come hard to find with this guy, he has devoted much of his life to Sierra & Steel guitar, a Master builder, Look for new things to come from him I'm thinking..Sorry to be so wendy, I woke up @ 3 this morning, and no one to talk to, other than 10,000 plus steel player ..OK it's 5 now, and need more coffee, and a smoke...and sorry for miss spelling most of this post!..my spell checker is still a sleep .and have a busy day teaching, I have Maurice coming over for a lesson trying to teach him on how to have a Bad Attitude..in the key of Bb.. I'll let you know how it works out...

Have a Great Day ......and go play some STEEL>>>>>> and Swing It !!

David, I am going to be looking for a good used Sierra session but if Tom is cooking something up I may hold off to see whats coming .
I agree Sierras are among the prettiest guitars I have ever laid eyes on. Youre dad was ahead of the rest of the industry in his engineering and imagination. Hats off to him for his contribution and I wish him all the best. How did the name 'Sierra' come about?

Quentin
Thanks for the kind words,
The name came from the Sierras in Ca, we were living in Red Bluff Ca, and we had a great views of the Sierra Mountains and Dad decided on naming the guitar Sierra..and thats were it was born..

Hey David,,,GREAT post,,(even if you are a little "wacky",,,we can overlook that and attribute it to that CA up-bringing,,,LOL!!) Looking forward to seeing you guys again in Dallas,,,but I may not make it due to some pending shoulder surgery,,,uuughh!!!

Seriously,,,very good post,,,the PSG community REALLY needs to know more about your Dad,,,,and the steel guitar world he was involved in,,,aside from the Nashville scene,,

I've been playing a D10 Session keyless for about 2 years and I think it's a well designed, well built guitar. I hear occasionally that there were some "issues" with some of the Sessions. Does anybody know what this might refer to. The reason I'm asking is if it applies to the one I have, I'll keep an eye out. So far, I've not had any problems.

G. W.
Nothing wrong with your guitar.

My opinion from what i have seen is that the 'Sierra' was one of the best steels around and still is, it seems like the idea's were way forward and brilliant. I think 'buddy emmons' had a super tone when he played the sierra, and i understand that he has multiple input on that, but the guitar has to stand up to the discriminating requirements and it does.

David
As far as I know there's nothing with my guitar. I've just heard (more than once) that there was some quote "issues" with some of the Sessions. So far I've had nobody say anything specific. Because I have one, I'm just curious. Again, I like my Session so far better than any guitar that I've had.

Glyndon Woosley wrote:David
As far as I know there's nothing with my guitar. I've just heard (more than once) that there was some quote "issues" with some of the Sessions. So far I've had nobody say anything specific. Because I have one, I'm just curious. Again, I like my Session so far better than any guitar that I've had.

fwiw, There's not a mainstream Pedal Steel Guitar brand that hasen't had some "issues" with some models, as far as I know.

Here's what I'm picking' on now. It's a Great Guitar !

I just spent a few hours setting up a keyless Session S-10 for a buddy and I am very impressed with the steel. They are very nice instruments.

I had a batch of 10 Session series 14 stringers made under the PST 13 series label.



Later the BEAST was fabricated by Sierra for me. Integrated tuner and changer...changer on players right...drop in neck plate...13th series tuning setup...and more "different" stuff.



There were two reasons to choose Sierra = good engineering in the hardware, and nice folk to deal with.

I've owned several Sierra steels and played them as my main performing guitars for over 20 years. Here's one that's never left the house.
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It's a 1978 Sierra Olympic S-12.

Bad Attitude in Bb...! good one david!

Here's mine , I love the Sierra guitars.

Jimmy Duvall,
I don't know if you are aware of this so I will share this information with you.

Jimmy go to this site, you will see the Blue Dumplin when I got it.

http://danburnham.com/gold/displayimage ... um=1&pos=0

Now here is all I'll tell you and you can call me if you want to know the whole story. I bought that guitar from a forum member. I cleaned it up, sent it to Bobby Bowman who sent it to Tom Baker. From Tom Baker it went to Guess Who? Buddy Emmons! Buddy kept it for a while and then I met Bobby in Nashville to get it back from Buddy before I sold it.

So you can say, Buddy played that guitar. In fact he had a special c6 tuning on it when I had it. I told Bobby I wouldn't tell anybody about the copedant and I never did.

Just a little history, and for what it's worth, Sierra is a Excellent Pedal Steel.

Dan (BMI)

Bad Attitude in Bb...! good one david!

Chris,
Got it in all keys now......

Here is my baby, alot of years to get all the autographs,, and a lot of great memories.

Here's what I play everyday with 5 knee & 5 Floor. It's an absolute joy to play.

After Chuck left the company they hired me to build and tune the guitars. I also worked with Danny shields at the time to come up with what would be a "standard" pickup for guitars shipped to music stores etc at that time.

My first purchase of a Sierra was having only seen the pedal rack. I thought that if the pedals had this much eng in them the guitar must be dy-no-mite.

After I worked there Mark Simpson, Tony Glassman and Harley James all followed. Oh those days of yesteryear.

Larry Behm

I just LOVE my Sierra Artist s-10... It's way more guitar than I deserve. I started with a Harlon Bros. Multi Kord, then a Sho-Bud Maverick. Those were enough to drive a sane man away from steel forever, but I'm hell-bent on doing this.. So I dumped both of those POS guitars, and bought a D-10 Sho-Bud.. 6 pedals and 1 knee, but it had some funky mechanism for changing the function of the pedals (some kind of flipper lever on the body)that was never right. Bad design, in my opinion.. Although it was beautiful looking and sounding, I spent many hours messing with the undercarriage and not much time trying to learn to play. Somebody had really messed with it, and it was very frustrating.. I ended up settling for limited function on one neck, and stripped the far neck down to 6 string non pedal- so I could use the damn thing. Plus it weighed a good 100 lbs, and I was dragging it back and forth to practice twice a week. It had to go.

Then the Sierra walked into my life. Opened the nice wooden case, set it up in 5 minutes, and it was heaven. Never had a problem with the guitar, it sounds great and plays smooth. Only bad part on the guitar is the loose nut who's holding the bar and wearing fingerpicks..

I have Eddy Long's Sierra Crown.
I'm prowd of it.
JJ