Odd old Fender PS-210

[Jake Gathright]

[Roger Shackelton]

This Custom built Fender PSG belonged to Gene Fields.
The bottom neck has 12 strings & the top neck has 8 strings with a raised fret board w/frets, that was played "Thumbs Carlisle" style, by pressing down on the strings.

The correct designation should be Fender PS-8/12.

The guitar was too light, so Gene attached a drummers seat on a kitchen chair frame.

Roger

[Jake Gathright]

That's awesome! Just the kind of info I was looking for. Thank you!

[Damir Besic]

super nice guitar...

[Tom Beck]

I wonder if Gene built it. I believe that he used to work for Fender and designed some of the guitars.

[Jon Light]

The PS 210 is indeed a Gene Field design.

[Jim Smith]

I wonder if Gene built it. I believe that he used to work for Fender and designed some of the guitars.

That was Gene's personal guitar and I believe he told me that he built it for himself when he was with Fender. That picture was taken in Gene's GFI room at the Texas Steel Guitar Show.

[Herb Steiner]

Very few of us have seen the undercarriage of a PS-210 but I guarantee it looks like no other steel guitar we've ever seen.

Gene Fields was a true mechanical genius of the steel guitar. In 1969 I was living in Hollywood playing a SB Crossover, and Gene called me to ask if I could come down to Fullerton to have Fender's lawyers look at my guitar. They wanted to know if the crossover feature of the PS-210 conflicted with Sho~Bud's patent design. It didn't, they thanked me, and I schlepped back to H'wood.

While was at the Fender factory, I asked Gene how he came up with the crossover design ideas for the PS-210. He said "many nights laying in bed in a dark room, staring at the ceiling."

I will miss talking with Gene at the steel shows a lot. He was a Fender man, a design genius, and a great musician. Seems like many of the club pickers in LA worked at Fender factory in the daytime: Gene, Danny Michaels, Jay Dee Maness, Al Petty, Freddie Tavares, Bill Carson, the list goes on and on.

[Jack Wilson]

Gene told me he built that guitar while at Fender, but on his own time not on Fender's time. He said he had permission from Fender to build it. That guitar is property of GFI now along with some Gene's other guitars. GFI also has a keyless bass proto type that Gene built while at Fender. As most know, Gene was the designer of the semi-hollow Fender Starcaster and before he died I gave him a Musicians Friend catalog with the reissued semi-hollow Starcaster. He was happy the design was being made again. The headstock design he made for the Starcaster he used with Fenders permission on the six string guitars he built with the Sierra name. Thumbs Carlyle endorsed that guitar, but it never took off. I saw some adds in Vintage Guitar Magazine of builders using that headstock design now on their custom guitars, and I told Gene about it and said you should sue them. He laughed and said Fender owns the rights if there are any.

[Chris Templeton]

A very cool Fender. Too bad they didn't go into production with it. I saw that guitar when I visited with Gene at GFI, around 1990, in Arlington. It didn't have a seat on it.
He also had his fretboard steel, which he played one year at Scotty's. I played it in Arlington, and because it didn't have a compensated bridge, or even a slanted bridge, when fretting his fretboard steel, many strings were out of tune.
Gene as well as Thumbs Carlyle were main inspirations to have a raised fretboard with a second compensated bridge built by Sierra.
Ned Steinberger did the blueprints and Sierra made the guitars; a single neck prototype and a double neck, the inside neck a ten string Tapper and the outside, an 11 string pedal steel neck
I called it "The Tapper", because the tapping technique, popularized by Stanley Jordan, had come out, and was an inspiration to have one made.
The second half of my song "Spanish Moss", on "The Tapper" record is tapping: https://christophertempleton.bandcamp.c ... anish-moss
My solo on "Spanish Moss" demonstrates the technique:
https://christophertempleton.bandcamp.c ... anish-moss
These days, I'm not big on tapping, because it sounds "short of breath". Compression and/or overdrive can help remedy this and favor the standard guitar technique of right hand picking and left hand fretting.
Also, having multiple sclerosis set me back a few notches in my enthusiasm for playing the Tapper/steel.
My joke to myself was that I was tired of guitarist making fun of steelers with their B/G benders, hence The Tapper.