The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm looking for a steel/tone bar. I visited the two largest music stores in Columbus, OH yesterday only to find that neither store had any. I'm going to try one small local shope before I buy one online.

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

BJS bar is one of the best if not the best and you get good service from the inventor himself Bill Stroud, if you're serious about feel...tone and good sustain than BJS is the name.

here the link http://www.bjsbars.com/

I use two. Switch back and forth after three or four weeks. BJS bar and the Carp Bar by Rains.

B...J...S Any thing else is a waste of money, you will never have to buy another, unless you lose it, or need two....

I agree with these chaps- Can't go wrong with B.J.S.
Also- I really like my new TriboTone bar as well

Any thing else is a waste of money

BJS makes a great bar; however, I wouldn't go so far as to say that purchasing anything else is a waste of money. Dunlop bars are good bars. Bobbe Seymour's Cobra Coil bars are also very good. The Twister is great. Jim Burden's Bullet Bars are also very good bars.

Lee, from South Texas

I have one with "Emmons" stamped on the end. It seems smooth, but I'm only 1 week into this instrument and don't know any thing else. Is what I have not desireable? Also, I have seen videos of players who raise and lower the end of the steel very often while playing, thereby (I guess) to only effect/touch the strings being played. Is this a common method? I would think that it would be so much easier to just leave the steel flat on many strings when playing, but I have noticed string noise (with it moving across the wound strings, particularly) while sliding up and down the neck. What is the most common way to have the steel "work". Please advise and thanks.

Charlie Silliman wrote:I have one with "Emmons" stamped on the end. It seems smooth, but I'm only 1 week into this instrument and don't know any thing else. Is what I have not desireable?

What you have is fine.

Also, I have seen videos of players who raise and lower the end of the steel very often while playing, thereby (I guess) to only effect/touch the strings being played. Is this a common method?

Yes. Covering strings you're not playing (or plan to play directly) is wasted energy. And, it creates wear and noise. Thinking otherwise is a common misconception, though.

One excellent bar that has not been mentioned is the John Pearse "frozen" bar. I think these are as good as the BJS.

Are zirconia bars being made again or not? I heard that they were for a while, but were discontinued again.

I've got a grooved bar called Sacred Steel and I believe you can find 'em through Carter Steel Guitars. It's a great bar and the difference is, it's got grooves in the middle. It's probably my best bar.

Brett

I can't be sure about bars but i owned many over the years playing for a living.I even played a set one night with an empty beer bottle because some one in the band hid my bar for a joke.In all honesty not one person could have told the difference.
Last bar i had i got from Bobbe Seymore and was good as any i ever owned.If fact some one could have it cheap as i no longer play steel.
IMHO,i believe most of this what is best,ect is due to the internet.
Reason i ordered a bar from Bobbe is i had quit again and had gave my Sho Bud bar away i had had since 1968.
Not putting any bar down.I just never saw any difference.I say buy a bar the size you like and pick.I doubt very much any one puts out a bad bar.
First time i ever saw Jimmy Day playing in Odessa Tx,he was using a very large bar made out of brass as i remember.Sure didn't hurt his tone are playing.
Not sure what i am trying to say here except i have also come to believe 90% of the tone is in the hands.Tracy

My Favorite bar is the 15/16ths by Jim Burden,great price,great bar. http://www.bulletbars.com/index.html

I agree with Mike--the Pearse thermo-cryonic (frozen) bar is what I've been using for years. These are solid stainless steel, not chrome plated. I never tried the BJS, but the Pearse bar seemed to give me better sustain and tome than the Dunlop I had before it.


Derby SD-10, NV-112, TruTone

Nathan,

I live in Columbus, you are welcome to stop by and try my BJS bar. I also have a Pearse bar you can try.

Let me know if you are interested in coming up and I will send you my phone number. Blue Grass Supply on High Street has some bars in stock. However, I suggest you try the BJS before you buy.

Marvin

I doubt if you can buy a better bar than a BJS. I also doubt if you can buy a better bar than a John Pearse "Cryogenic" bar. I have both and use the Pearse always when I am not using the Zirconia which is no longer in production to my knowledge. The reason I always use the Pearse is because it is 7/8" and the BJS I have is 15/16" Both are very smooth and equal tone to my ears.
Jerry

Brett, I used one of those for 2 years and really liked it. I may get another one, I thought they stopped having them at Carter...I'll have to check.

The Emmons bar is all you need. I use a Dunlop 920 some, I like it.

BJS set the standard for steel guitar bars. Jody.

Yep Jody, just like Emmons did for steel guitars. Then along came some other great ones.
Jerry

Yesterday I made the 101 mile hike through Amish country to Hummingbird Music Studios and bought a BJS after the recommendation of a friend/mentor who plays. I was desperate to get a bar and get one i did. As it turned out, they only had one BJS bar for 10 string steel, a 1". It is a little larger than what was suggested but after going that far I wasn't leaving empty handed. My first encounter with the steel was interesting. I think I got immediate;y m,ore comfortable within the hour. I made myself use those finger picks and a plastic thumb pick and seemed to begint to grasp the feeling of it.


The difference between using a pick for guitar and steel for is that I was never able to strum a guitar easily with a big thick guitar pick. It is much easier for me on steel due to the fact fact that I'm not strumming.

Boy this Emmons sounds fantastic, granted it is the first steel I have ever played. Thanks again Weldon! He has been incredibly kind, hospitable, and helpful!

A steel guitar is round and smooth. How much better can one be than another assuming they are all in the same class of material and shape? Just saying "BJS is the best" isn't all that helpful for people like me that haven't tried that many bars. I want to know WHY it's the best. If they set the standard, surely others have started building to that same standard and those others are probably cheaper. Why is BJS still the standard or is it just a respect thing?

BJS bars are good bars and I used one for years, BUT, that was before I tried a Tribo Tone. These are amazing bars, slick as all get out, and always warm to the touch. And, you can get them in colors to match your steel. Here's a picture of the first one I got, now I have a blue one to match my blue steel, and a red one will come along some day. Here's a link to their website. http://www.tribotone.com/ They're not cheap, but worth every penny in my humble opinion.

I want to know WHY it's the best.

"Best" requires having a metric to measure by, and not everybody has the same metric, so there is no universal "best".

I'll tell you why I really like the BJS bar. It is smoother than anything else I've ever tried. They are heavy-duty hard-chrome industrial-strength chrome-plated, and they glide across even stainless strings incredibly well. I've dropped mine (I have a few) on concrete floors, they ride in my gig bag with a bunch of other stuff, and no matter what I do, they stay ding-free and remarkably smooth. They are guaranteed for life, and the maker will insist on replacing any bar with a problem. He had a batch or two with a chrome plating problem, but strongly encouraged anybody with any issue whatever to please return for a new one. You don't see this level of integrity and service very often. I don't know Bill Stroud personally, but it's pretty obvious that he stands behind these bars 100%.

I really like some of the stainless bars I've tried, but the metallurgical rule-of-thumb is that metal contact with the same metal produces more friction - and I've noticed somewhat more friction with stainless bars on stainless steel wound strings. If one uses nickel-wound strings of some sort, then this seems not to be a problem. I just happen to like stainless steel wound strings on pedal steel.

btw, I've tried a lot of bars, but not the zirconium bar, which I'm told is really great, but they are very expensive if they're being made at all.

Small aside - I bought a Sierra pedal steel about a year after I started playing. It came with a bar that had what appeared to be a script "S" on the blunt end, and I assumed it was a Sierra bar. To my ears it was a significant improvement over my Dunlop and a couple of other bars I had. I used this as my main bar for several years until I decided, based on rave reviews on this forum, to get a BJS bar. Lo and behold, the BJS bar came, I looked at the blunt end and what I had thought was an "S" on my "Sierra" bar turned out to be BSJ - it was a BJS bar. Ha, that'll learn me.

Anyway, that gave me a spare for home use and one to ride in my gig ready-bag.

I have all the bars mentioned except the Pearse and I really like the Tribo-Tone bar the best except for the price,ouch! Living in the north where it can be cold and dry the Tribo-Tone always feels warm and easy to hold the 1" dia bar. It is the slickest of all the bars and their 8 oz. bar has tone like other 10/11 oz. bars. The other bars are good bars but the Tribo-Tone is outstanding for me!