The Steel Guitar Forum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DxW65b3U7s

From luthier Jason Dumont on FB:

This lap steel features a transposing tailpiece made by Hipshot products that allows the player to switch tunings with the flip of a lever. Because of this it required the standard Rodeo model design to be tweaked a bit; the neck needed to be joined at the 14th fret marker rather than the 12th to give a bit more room.
The body was also stretched a bit at the bottom to give a nice platform for the tailpiece.
The pick ups are made by Lollar pick ups, in my mind the finest pick ups available. I really cant say enough about their pick ups. I have been using them exclusively for a decade now. Here I use their Supro reproduction "string through" design and pair it with their "Gold Foil" for the neck position.

Here is a closeup of the guitar, with the Hipshot DoubleShot which hit the market in 2014. I have only seen (and played) these on dobros until now. I figured it only a matter of time to start seeing the device installed on lap steels.

The pickup selection makes it sort of a lap steel version of a Coodercaster.

What a beautiful guitar. The tone is amazing (although I suspect the guy driving it has something to do with that, too).

For those unfamiliar with it, here is the unmounted Hipshot DoubleShot:




And the spiel from the Hipshot website, they are also making one that fits on a Telecaster:

Open up your Dobro® or resophonic guitar to new dimensions of tuning with the DoubleShot by Hipshot. With the flip of the DoubleShot’s lever you can effortlessly change from open G to open D or from open F to open E (and beyond!). It's like having two instruments in one!

The low tuning is set using your traditional tuners and the high tuning is set on the thumbscrews of the DoubleShot. The lever actuates individual cams that bend each string to the higher pitch accurately and quickly. It’s all mechanical and so dead simple it seems like magic.

Extremely accurate and quick tuning changes with the flip of a lever.
Made from polished aluminum and stainless steel, components will not corrode over time.
We recommend installation with rolling nut and locking tuners for smoother and more accurate transitions.
Professional installation recommended.

that tune didn't do much for me. obviously gives a break from the dobro, but the dobro is what impresses me.
pretty instrument, though.

The tune didn't do anything for me either. And I wasn't real impressed with the tone. But as was said, it's a purty guitar.

Not my favorite JD lap steel tune either, but you do have to remember to take the tone with a grain of salt - a guy shot the video with what was very likely a cell phone camera.

I like the tone a lot (listening in headphones). Has he ever recorded with Bill Frisell?

Yup. Think he was all over Frisell's Nashville album.

As noted earlier, Jerry recorded with Frisell on Bill's Nashville album, and maybe one other one the name of which escapes me right now. Bill played on the title track (which he also wrote) on Jerry's Lookout For Hope with was released around 2002. Frisell had orginally recorded the piece on one of his own albums in the late '80s.

But I recall only on dobro in these sessions, not lap steel.

Below is a link to a live version of a tune from the Nashville album in 1997 called Gimme a Holler. Viktor Krauss on upright bass, brother of Alison.

b0b, you might recognize the "headless" guitar Bill is playing as having been made by long time local luthier and fellow Sonoma County resident Steve Klein.


Jerry looks to be playing his RQ Jones, and many Douglas fans still think this is the best sounding guitar he has played in his career. He finally retired it a number of years ago and donated it to The Country Music Hall of Fame. He told me after a show about five years ago that he never really thought he was completely "done" with that dobro, but sometimes he didn't know which guitar he was getting in the morning, like it had woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Hard to keep in tune after a number of years and didn't sound quite right at times. Some of Rudy's resophonic guitars were known for this sort of thing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dixd6msKLjo

Nice, thick tone, and a great looking guitar. The tune's kind of boring though. I guess it's just not my cup of tea.

The main part of the tune over the vamp reminds me of Third Stone From the Sun.

Jerry's definitely done more interesting work on lap steel than this tune. The guitar is cool but not really my thing.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's a riff on Third Stone from the Sun. A few years a Jerry Douglas recorded "Hey Joe", so he's probably a Jimi fan.

I have also seen him play a couple times where in the middle of a tune he'll morph into Little Wing.

He's a monster and I appreciate anything he wants to play. This is definitely right up my alley and I think they make a lot of music, considering the instrumentation. Almost like Jeff Beck when he tours as a trio plus a violinist.

I do miss having a guitar player in the JD Band. I had mentioned Guthrie Trapp in the Master of the Tele thread, that might have been my favorite edition, Guthrie was with Jerry four years.

I prefer not to have guitar with lap steel guitar. In fact, I want to replace the guitar player!

No question that whether on Dobro or lap steel JD's among the greatest steel guitarists to ever pick up a bar. I prefer his sound on these cuts to the one I posted up top ....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFKHBDs ... 9&index=19

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRy53fb_7Sc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf6hV7ArFjc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0cD4FgM1hs

Those are all great examples Andy, and yeah, the promotional video version of So Here We Are you shared makes the tune more appealing than the one on the top which was likely shot on someone's cell phone.

I remember when YouTube first came on the scene and artists were often upset finding their live performances there as shot by an audience member because of poor quality though it certainly has improved a lot over the years. But at one point the artists just threw in the towel because these videos became like a tsunami and it was unstoppable. In more recent years I think some of them have viewed it more like the glass being half full instead of half empty and maybe the publicity is a good idea, video quality aside.

Andy shared a track from Jerry's 1998 album Restless On the Farm, the link below is to my favorite from that record, Jerry and Steve Earle's take on Don't Take Your Guns to Town recorded 40 years after Johnny Cash released the original, with a modernized verse written in at the end by Steve.

This is some phat lap steel tone. At that point I believe Jerry was playing his custom lap Strat and maybe a custom lap Tele as made by Nashville's Joe Glaser. Don't know what amps he was using.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpslzuhXrtk

Excellent version! Never heard it before. Great tone and feel and lyrics that resonate even more today. Thanks for the link!

I liked this very much, sort of heard some David Lindley who I admire a lot. Norwegian Wood by the Beatles comes to mind in this tune, I used to like playing around with that tune on my lap steel years ago.

Mark Eaton wrote:I figured it only a matter of time to start seeing the device installed on lap steels.

I think the position of the lever on the far side of the strings make it more difficult to use "on the fly" as you're picking. Are there more examples of use on a lap steel?

I haven't seen any other examples yet of it being used on a lap steel. Jerry's new Lap King was likely the first, and it's possible it's the only lap steel with one so far. To make it work on a lap steel Lap King's Jason Dumont had to do a lot of customization to his Rodeo model, here is what he wrote about it on Facebook in June:

Here is a really interesting project made for Jerry Douglas. This lap steel features a transposing tailpiece made by Hipshot products that allows the player to switch tunings with the flip of a lever. Because of this it required the standard Rodeo model design to be tweaked a bit; the neck needed to be joined at the 14th fret marker rather than the 12th to give a bit more room.
The body was also stretched a bit at the bottom to give a nice platform for the tailpiece.
The pick ups are made by Lollar pick ups, in my mind the finest pick ups available. I really cant say enough about their pick ups. I have been using them exclusively for a decade now. Here I use their Supro reproduction "string through" design and pair it with their "Gold Foil" for the neck position. The guitar made it's debut with Jerry May 30th in Charleston S.C.

So Jason has the "template" now for use on one of his lap steel models, but any other builder is going to have to go through the process on their own to make it work with their lap steel designs as opposed to many of the large body modern resonator guitar designs where it it likely a pretty easy fit for most builders.

I have played the device a couple times on a friend's Beard E model and I think it's really slick, it operates very smoothly. But it strikes me as something you don't use all that often "on the fly." I think of it more like the original motivations for the pedal steel guitar as having the pedals for changing tunings as opposed to using the instrument for the string bending sounds we are all so familiar with.

As far as the position of the lever, I know I wouldn't want it on the bass side as opposed to the treble side, I think it would sort of be in the way. As for Jerry and the dobro, I estimate that he plays in G tuning at least 75% of the time, in D maybe 20% or more, and something else less than 5% of the time.

I was listening to his JD Band set at the Telluride, Colorado festival last summer on a streaming webcast and I recall him ending one song he plays in G and flipping up the lever on his Black Beard to D and immediately starting into the next piece. Historically he would have to unstrap and switch out guitars and tell a joke or comment on the crowd or the weather to make that move. Now it's like bam! - into D tuning - right now.

This is of course the main value of the thing, not to mention as a touring musician not having to haul around an additional guitar for a different tuning and pay more airline baggage fees.

You could certainly use it on the fly to change to the second tuning if for example you want to play the lead break on a song in the other tuning for variety, but I wouldn't think within that lead break you'd ever want to be flipping it back and forth no matter how adept you are at using the device. On a lap steel that's what some of the guitars equipped with palm pedals are for.

It hasn't been linked in this thread, here is a demo at Beard in Maryland which was shot shortly after the device hit the market a couple years ago. Paul had Gaven Largent come by and play a Beard JD signature guitar with the DoubleShot, I think this was the first time Gaven had ever tried the thing himself. He's not doing this in the video, but if one is going to change the tuning in the middle of the song you are going to want to mute the strings with the palm of your bar hand so that you don't hear the change in tuning.

Gaven is the young man who replaced Rob Ickes in Blue Highway going on a year ago with Rob leaving the band after about 21 years to concentrate on his duo with Trey Hensley.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FP_Zw30ZpY