The Steel Guitar Forum

So I've been lurking on the forum for a couple of months. I finally took the plunge and bought Dave Sharp's Carter Starter from the "For Sale" section. I've had the guitar for a few weeks, I've had a lesson from Steve Lamb and I'm practicing my grips and forward and backward rolls everyday. Last night, I'm using my headphones and playing through my Boss GT8. I break the 3rd string. No prob, Dave tossed an extra set of strings in the box when he sent me the guitar. I break out my winder and put the new string on. Takes a couple minutes and then I turn on the tuner on the GT8 and get the string tuned up. When I hit the G chord, something is wrong -- I mean really wrong. Everything sounds tinny and distorted. I check the G#, it looks okay, it's in the rollers, the string ball is seated like the other strings. I loosen the string, make sure everything is the right place, tighten back up, put the bar on the 3rd fret and hit the G again. Same deal -- tinny, distorted, just bad.

So I send the next 30 minutes checking everything I can think of -- pickup leads, jack, screws on the tuner, so on and so forth. Then I look down at the GT8 and the d*** wah-wah function is turned on... D'OH I must have changed it from volume to wah when I turned on the tuner. I flip it back to volume and the guitar sounds normal. But I have a few more gray hairs in my beard!

I don't believe I would have told that story for my first post on the Forum!

Welcome aboard. We're always happy to see another Texan join the club.

I'd sell the GT-8! It's just evil!:)
JE:-)>

how many have tuned (6 string usually) with a chorus pedal turned on? JP

Jason,

Don't feel bad. Just last week I set every thing up for a job (or so I thought), then sat down and hit a couple of chords....Nothing, absolutely nothing. Couldn't even get a bit of hum from my amp. Spent the next 10 minutes tracing everything down and finally happened to look at the guitar. NOT plugged in.......and I've been playing 50+ years!

Welcome Jason from Alabama,Mistakes are good teaching tools,You WILL make more mistakes,but I bet this won't be one of them.

I made a big deal at a gig trying to find why no sound was coming out, amp off then back on, cables out and back in, kicked the volume pedal, everybody looking at me, I had the toggle on the c6 neck instead of the e-9. I told everybody I had a short in my delay pedal to save face....oh man

If I turn off the power on my Stob-o-flip, I can use it as a cheesey distortion effect. Haven't wanted to yet though.

Jason welcome to the steel guitar world! Mistakes happen....One time I was pickin with some friends and I pluged in everything, no sound! I had just bought my Emmons and couldnt get no sound out of it....I switched out cables, nothing..pumped the volume pedal...nothing...all of the sudden I looked at the back of my amp and my headphone adapter was still plugged in....I must have not pulled hard enough when I unplugged my headphones

Well, Jason. Someone may as well warn you in advance. When you start snapping those .011’s at the key end it’s because you’re not putting enough wraps around the peg.

Best wishes and welcome.

On the bright side,
At least you weren't tuning up at a gig...

Welcome to the forum Jason. I know Steve Lamb and he is a great guy. Have fun and practice... practice... practice cause that what it takes bro.

Jason
Congrats on your first post.
I wish you many more.

Rick

www.rickjohnsoncabs.com

Hey Jason welcome to the forum.

I started taking lessons from Steve 5 wives ago which averages out to somehwere close to 26 years give or take a wife or two and I've been playing somewhere every weekend since.

Have Fun!

When I started out on steel (also with a Carter Starter) my gripe with the third string wasn't so much that they popped so often (true, they did) but that the volume just didn't seem to match the other strings. I got a compressor and that basically fixed things. & now I make sure they get a good double wind at the tuning peg end just to be sure they'll sit right- they pop a lot less now.

I play almost 30 years. I've been in many bands and many situations over that time as you might expect.

I did some recording last week and had done a couple of tracks over a BIAB song. When I played it back after much hard work it had a wierd out of time distortion going on. So after all my hard work playing the track right I erased the track thinking it was ruined. The new track did the same thing because I had mistakenly turned on the delay in the boards effect bank. So I erased a perfectly recorded track for no reason. I had to do all my hard work over again.

Thanks for the welcome and the words of wisdom! Tomorrow's my second lesson, so we'll see how it goes!

Yesterday I took all the strings off my S-10 Zum and cleaned her up good. I put The new strings on and tuned it by ear to another guitar I am working on.I was running late and put it in the case and drove to the gig. When I began to tune the pedals and levers, they were all badly off. The Boss tuner was working fine on the open strings. I tuned all the pedals and levers. When we began to play, I was exactly one fret off. The guitar I had tuned to by ear was not in tune, it was flat. I missed four or five songs retuneing everything on the guitar. There were no holes in the tile floor to crawl into.

Don't fret, we all do stupid things. I'd like to have a dollar for everyone who's changed a speaker...and then discovered their amps "distortion" switch was turned on, or they had a bad coupling cap.

Everyone is a fool for 15 minutes each day. To be thought of as truly wise, merely remember not to exceed that limit.

I had a friend of mine tell me if you weren't crazy when you started to play steel you would soon be.

Mike

Before the show in Saluda playing back stage every thing worked fine. Tommy Dodd hooked up my rig no sound, we checked everything disconnected everything bug guitar to amp, worked the show without the DD3.
IF YOU USE GEORGE L plugs make sure you tighten the right sngle plugs now and then they work loose, and need to be tightened. That was it. I gave all my right hand plugs to Larry Moore, he was happy. They have been replace since and I learned a hard lesson.
No more problems.


ernie