The Steel Guitar Forum

Hi guys, I found this on E Bay. Do any of you know anything about , or have one of these guitars? I think Mr. Wheeler was in Nashville TN.,making guitars in the late 70's.It looks to be very well made. Thanks , Larry Johnson. Here is the item no.Go to Ebay.com and enter this no. 190383348983

I think it's home made.

The undercarriage looks like it might have been made out of old MSA parts.

Sorry Mike, please click on Richard Burton's link. Some great pics., Larry johnson

Let me re-phrase. SOME OF the parts look like those used by MSA.

Actually, the ebay listing is absolutely correct, the Wheeler guitars were all made in a storefront shop in North Portland throughout the 1970's and maybe the early 1980's. If you look at the photos you can plainly see "Portland, Oregon" on the builder's label, I don't know where the Nashville idea came from but to my knowledge he never worked in Nashville.

Although he had some notions of his own about how to build a pedal guitar, there is nothing "homemade" about them at all and he built at least a hundred guitars and maybe several times that. This one appears to have a formica surface over an aluminum frame, but most of the ones that I saw in the mid-1970's had wood bodies with very basic finish work.

Harley James would probably know more about them than I do but I remember going up there to visit Mr. Wheeler as he worked on them when I was still playing the Shobud Maverick. The late Danny Shields may have been involved with winding the pickups, in any case they are a bit heavy and not necessarily known for being all that pretty but the machine work was always first rate.

MSA and Sierra both have similar design features, whether they copied from him or vice versa I cannot say, I believe that Wheeler pre-dates Sierra, hopefully someone with more detailed knowledge or perhaps a better memory than I can chime in here....

I met Lee Wheeler around 78-79 on Lower broadway in Nashville. He would approach musicians and show his one or two Guitars he had with him..I believe he had a D-24 for sale.He sold my steel player a 14 Stringer..Seemed like a pretty well made machine..I'm not sure if he is still with us.

Please note that I only said I thought it was home made. I guess I was mistaken. This is certainly not the first time that happened.

The store selling this guitar is very close to where I live. I'm going to go over tomorrow and take a look at it, and will report back what I see.

You are certainly no more mistaken than I am, Mike, I always wondered where Lee sold all those guitars he made because I seldom saw any local guys playing them. He was always building new guitars with more strings than the last when I was still figuring out what to do with the 9 string on my little 3+0 E9 Maverick. He was always patiently explaining to me what could be done musically, mechanically and ergonomically and I learned a lot about the instrument hanging around his shop.

FWIT with a kid to feed at the time it was well over a decade before I got to add any knees and I'm still finding new "obvious" things to do with that 9 string all the time.

Thanks, Larry, for bringing back the memories, I've heard tell that anybody who says they remember those days is either a liar or wasn't there at all...

Like all the other Portland steelers, I used to go out and visit Lee Wheeler's shop in N. Portland. No two guitars were ever the same. Each model had some new "improvement" or twist.

He relocated his shop to Nashville, I believe in the late 70's (not sure about the date). As far as I know, Danny was not heavily involved (if at all) w/ Wheeler.

Larry, Eric or Harley, feel free chime in.

I had a 1972 birdseye MSA D-12 with a case that was falling apart and starting to damage the finish on the guitar. I met Lee Wheeler just after he moved to Nashville.

At the time I was thinking about a 14 string and he was one of the few building one. We discussed it and I decided to stick with 12 strings but he built me a GREAT case for the D-12. Metal clad, built like a Sherman tank.

Fascinating guy. I never saw him again but loved that case. It was heavy but so was the MSA and I was in my 20s so it was less important.

I almost bought a Wheeler Steel in Nashville.I have another memory of Mr. Wheeler. He showed me a shorter body steel he was making, with a very short key head, and one or two of the string tuners had to be tuned from underneath the body. Anyone remember seeing that?
Lee Wheeler was a very nice, smart man. Anyone know if he is still living?
There must be a lot of Wheeler Steels out there somewhere. Larry Johnson

I have Known Lee for 40 Years.he had a steel shop in Nashville across from Wanda and Louies, on 5th ave across fro the opry. I moved away from Nashville in 1980, Lee called me and i moved Him and all of his equiptment to ILL, i had 40 acres at the time and a big shed, so Lee and i built guitar parts for his guitars .in 1989 i sold that acreage and moved to Jacksonville ILL. Lee moved to alpha ,IL, and built Guitars and steel guitars.He came to my place at least once a week for years, we worked together building steel guitars. Lee had all of his Machinery, stamp dies and equiptment stolen by some guys he got in volved with about 4 years ago, He moved all of his stuff to their building in Kankakee,IL. the guy put a lock on the door and wouldnt let Lee have any thing.,He knew that Lee could not PhysicallY get his machinery and equiptment out of that building,Any way Lee called me 3 years ago and could not drive any more. due to headaches, I have lost track of him , his phone is disconnected, i fear the worst, he had been going to the hospital everyday because of head aches,Lee was a Good guy and his charachacter was second to none, I sure wish i could see him again, Chet

Wow, thanks for the update, Chet, I should have guessed the two of you would be good friends.

Back in the 1980's, I had one of the short bodied S-10 Wheeler Ped-All steels that Larry Johnson mentioned above. It was the second steel I had (my first steel was a Fender 400 that I still have).

As Larry said, it had a short key head - as I recall, the 6 outer strings were tuned on the upper keys, and the inner 4 strings were tuned below. Picture taking a standard 10 string key-head, cutting off the top 4 keys, and mounting that part underneath. Pretty innovative way to shorten the guitar, but a little inconvienent for tuning. Had a typical double raise/double lower all-pull changer that was easy to work on.

It was light and small (good for hauling around), but unfortunately lacked the sustain that I needed, so once I was regularly gigging I sold the Wheeler and upgraded to a '76 Emmons PP D-10. The Emmons was about twice the weight of the Wheeler, but has sustain until the middle of next week!

As I mentioned, the store where this steel is for sale is near me, so I went over and checked it out.

It’s seems to be very solid, but it’s also very heavy. Even heavier than my old MSA Classic. It had a bizarre tuning on it that I’ve never seen before so I didn’t plug it in, but I got the impression that it would have a lot of sustain because of it’s massive weight.

It has a double raise double lower changer. The parts in the undercarriage are similar to those used by MSA, but they are not the same. As far as I could tell, the only thing that was identical was the use of a 3/8 inch drill rod for the cross shafts.

The guitar has only 2 pedals (you can see where there had been a 3rd one that had been removed,) and one of the knee levers doesn’t work. Aside from that, it’s not in too bad condition. It needs restoration, but it’s basically very well made, and could be brought back to life.

The store has a lot of really nice 6 string guitars. (One could easily spend $25,000 there in a couple of hours.) The owner, named George, clearly knows a lot about them. But he knows nothing about steels. I told him that the guitar needed that 3rd pedal. At first he was unconvinced, but I showed him the screw holes where the hardware had been mounted. I told him that there were steels on the market with 3 pedals that cost less than he was asking for this one, and that he’d never sell the steel without the 3rd pedal and it would sit unsold in his store for 20 years.

Once he understood that the pedal needed to be added, he told me he had a guitar repair guy who cold do it.

Judging from the quality of the 6 stringers he had, I’d guess that his guitar tech was very good, but again, unless he knows about steels, he would not be able to really get it right and set the instrument up properly. I told him about Jim Palenscar and called the shop on my cell phone, and he and George talked for a while. I don't know what agreement they reached, if any.

I hope George ships the steel to Jim for restoration. In it’s present condition, it’s pretty useless, but once restored, I think it would be a fine instrument, weight notwithstanding.