Nice Demo of Encore but....

[Brian Scott]

I saw this on youtube today. Really nice sound and playing. Left handed and strung the other way.I would not say it's backwards because it works for him!
Does anybody else play this way?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlJ6KtfYYxo&t=4s

[Pete Bailey]

Wow that is mindbendingly odd. But also probably great for teaching as it is "frontways" to the student observer!

[Ollin Landers]

This really disturbed me when I saw it. But he seems to have a better grasp of what he is doing than some players I've met that played it (the right way).

No one told Albert King he was wrong. But then Albert just flipped the guitar from left to right. This guy is playing upside down and backwards.

[Dave Meis]

Never seen one strung that way. Left handed player with a left handed guitar (OK so far), but strung upside down?? That's a new one...

[Pete Burak]

It would be cool if a righty played the Bar and Picks parts front the front side, while the lefty played the pedals and levers from the back side.

[Bob Carlucci]

yikes... Guy needs to lean left on the "intensity" knob on his delay just a tad... bob

[Donny Hinson]

I saw this on youtube today. Really nice sound and playing. Left handed and strung the other way.I would not say it's backwards because it works for him!
Does anybody else play this way?

Hopefully not!

[Dave Meis]

yikes... Guy needs to lean left on the "intensity" knob on his delay just a tad... bob

I see and hear a LOT of that ... even on ‘instructional’ videos .

[Mark Addeo]

Left handed pedal steel guitar top strung “upside down” string wise (analogous to Albert King or Dick Dale) BUT with a right handed Emmons pedal setup.

Nobody but the owner is ever going near that guitar to play it.

[Patrick Huey]

This really disturbed me when I saw it. But he seems to have a better grasp of what he is doing than some players I've met that played it (the right way).

No one told Albert King he was wrong. But then Albert just flipped the guitar from left to right. This guy is playing upside down and backwards.

Ollin
Dan Seals played guitar that way. He played left handed. Played a right handed guitar flipped over with strings upside down with low strings on bottom

[Ollin Landers]

Dan Seals played guitar that way.

I hate to pull this one out. It's just unfair.

Libba Cotten from Chapel Hill NC

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

Now you try playing alternating bass notes using your fingers instead of your thumb.

[Russ Wever]

from 6/6/17, same discussion came up . . .

The version of Left-handedness that Matts pedal steel is, if you were to pick up the top of a steel, turned it 'head for toe' (180 degrees) then set it back down.
In other words, the 'under the cabinet' stuff, pedals, knees, etc are the same as a right-hander but the 'stuff on top', strings, tuning keys, changer, neck, etc. are 'flipped'. This puts the low B (our 10th) string the farther away from Matt and the 'dubiously-named' 'chromatic' strings (G# & D#) are nearest to Matt.

I first met Matt when we toured together back in 1994, him on guitar. Matt plays guitar left-handed but uses a right-handed guitar strung right-handed which means that his highest pitched string is nearest the ceiling while his low E is nearest the floor. Matt impressed me early on when I was playing a Tom Morrell cassette on my Walkman (after all, it was the last century!) which had guitarist Clint Strong playing a hot solo on a brisk tune. Matt asked if I would rewind the solo as he got a sheet of manuscript paper out of his bag. As it replayed, Matt began writing notation about as quick as Clint was playing. He asked me to play it once more to get a couple notes that he missed the first time. Then when we got to sound-check, Matt tunes up his guitar, pulls out the paper and proceeds to rip off Clints solo - amazing!

Anyhow, several years later Matt got curious about lap steel and got an old Gibson six-string, turned it head-for-toe and began learning it. Then when he called with an interest in pedal steel, I did my darndest to convince him to go right-handed, thinking mostly of what would, or, more to the point, would not, be available for him as far as instrument selection. He was firm in that he had to have this certain version of a lefty steel, so I took a Carter Starter and performed a 'leftoctomy' to it. Several years ago Matt wanted to have a second lefty steel, and with a higher build-quality. My having worked with both Bruce Zumsteg and Doug Earnest on the Encore steel, it became the 'prime candidate.
I approached Doug with the idea and he, with his schedule more than full with his regular orders, sent me home with an unfinished, bare-bones cabinet and a box of undercarriage parts where I 'bread-boarded' the design, then returned it to him for cabinet work and final assembly.

Y'all shoulda seen Doug and I tuning it up after assembly: It took the two of us - One of us on one side to push the appropriate pedal or knee lever while the other guy's on the other side turning the tuning key or nylon tuner!

The old Carter Starter is still in his touring gear for when he goes out with Matchbox Twenty and/or Rob Thomas and the Encore stays in NYC for recording and live dates such as the Today Show appearance.
~Rw

Doug rendering a tune on Matt's new lefty . . .
"Volume Pedal ? We don't need no stinkin' volume pedal !"

[Doug Beaumier]

I taught a student who had this setup about 30 years ago. We put our guitars front to front (facing each other) and it was like I was looking into a mirror! Our pickups were both on the right side and our tuners were both on the left side. But his thin strings were closest to him and his wound strings were the furthest from him. So when I picked strings 8,7,6,5 my hand would move forward and when he picked strings 8,7,6,5 his hand would move back, toward him. It was like playing in front of a mirror. It was mind boggling!

[Brett Day]

Back in the mid to late 1990s, a steel player named Monte Good played a left handed Derby with John Michael Montgomery. He played a left handed Emmons in John Michael's "Be My Baby Tonight" video, and he played steel for a short time with the band Ricochet before Teddy Carr joined. The left handed Derby he played was seen in two videos with John Michael Montgomery, "Cowboy Love" and Hello L.O.V.E", and at John Michael Montgomery's live shows at the time. Back in 2000, there was another steel player who played a left handed Emmons with Mark Wills in his video, "I Want To Know Everything There Is To Know About You". I kept thinking the steel was switched around because I didn't know it was left handed.

[Mark McCornack]

! STRUH NIARB YM

[Steven Pearce]

MY BRAIN HURTS !

[Dick Wood]

I think this was either Paul McCartney or Jimi's first steel.