The Steel Guitar Forum

I always have Ernie Ball strings on my acoustic guitar....now I remember Tom Bradshaw telling me that he was a friend of Ernie Ball.
He told me Ernie is a steel player who also played guitar.
He wrote 5 or 6 course books for the steel..
Did anyone ever heard him play steel?,if so, with who?
Any recordings or records??
I am very curious to hear more about Ernie Ball.

Olaf

Go to Wikipedia and search Ernie Ball.
I did and there is quite a history behind this
man.
You will get some of your questions answered there.

I've tried most ,but not all strings on the PSG
and I now use Ernie Ball on E9 and C6.

They sound the best to me and are readily avaliable
here in North Texas.

Good Luck on your search and enjoy the history at the Wikipedia site.

Rodney

I know Ernie Ball had two Bigsby's made for him. One was a D-8 from the 50's ... not sure about the other.
Todd

I had the good fortune to speak on the phone with E.B. a few years before he passed on about his connection with Paul Bigsby-His second Bigsby is a cherry wood single ten that has plunger changers in the headstock as well as the changer bridge-He said when he took delievery of it from Paul and was trying it out-the guitar detuned very badly-He said Bigsby did a "quick fix" by inserting a stiffening rod underneath the length of the guitar which apparently did enough for Ernie to accept it

Thank y'all guys!
It helped me a lot,will still search for any recordings by Ernie.

In the above pictures of Ernie submitted by Olaf we see him playing his 1949 Bigsby double 8-I have this exact same picture that was sent to me by E.B. but it is enlarged where you can see the Bigsby name and ERNIE BALL on the front of the guitar-It has the most insane birdseye curled maple that I have ever seen and I did at one time own this instrument which has a colorful history of ownership-It has been refinished (with Ernie's name removed) several times-at one point the guitar was owned by Roy Lunn who had his name on it also-It has been rebuilt several times-It also unfortunately has been passed off as being "The Bud Isaacs Bigsby" which is a total falsehood as Bud has confirmed to me that he never owned it and we know that Jack Hamlett owns Bud's real Bigsby which was made later than 1949-If my memory serves me correctly the serial number date on this guitar is 112249 and Ernie told me that he sold it in approximately 1951 when he was drafted off to the Korean War-I have been contacted about this guitar several times now since I sold it with the understanding that it was NOT BUD'S even though his name (misspelled) had been stamped into the wood on the underside similiar to the way Bigsby did on some of his guitars

Ernie was the second steel player in Tommy Duncan's band after he went out on his own, joined around '49-50.

He also did a stint with the Eddie Cletro outfit which got him on TV, a kid show where Eddie's band backed Doyle O'Dell, recordings and a regular slot at the Palomino Club in North Hollywood, circa 1953.

http://www.hillbilly-music.com/artists/ ... p?id=15576

Not sure if he's on the Bear Family comp of Cletro sides though....

J.

Bear Family has two CD's available of Tommy Duncan - "Texas Moon" and "Beneath A Neon Star In A Honky Tonk". Ernie is one of the steel players on "Texas Moon". Not sure if he appears on the other, but both are good.

Thanks very much Rich,Bear family stuff isn't very hard to find here.
I'll look for it!

Ernie Ball wrote a whole series of Instructional books for the A6th Pedal and non-pedal Steel Guitar. I no longer have my set because I gave them to my son, but the first 5 books were non-pedal and taught a way to read notes, which were really good. Book 6 was a Pre-pedal book that basically taught you what each pedal did and book 7 was the only Pedal book.

I believe when he did the Pedal book, Jimmy Day and Buddy Emmons were converting us A6th pickers to E9th Nashville Pedal Steel.