The Steel Guitar Forum

found this track in my archives. a well intentioned attempt to play like john hughey on the classic tune "look at us". the solo beat me up pretty good. dont remember the details, but that is the sound of a GL E66 pickup for sure. no charge for the extra verb.

https://soundcloud.com/bill-hatcher/look-at-us

and one more....as if the others werent enough... on these cuts, i only used the lap steel with bass and a drum loop. i wanted the steel to be exposed and have nothing to hide behind or get in the way. sink or swim! lol

https://soundcloud.com/bill-hatcher/e-z-4-get-4

Wow these sound great Bill. Beautiful fat changes. What steel are you playing and how are you getting such sustain? I find that to be the biggest challenge on slow material as most PSGs have more natural sustain.

Nice Bill!!
Joe Elk Central Ohio

Do you remember if you were pulling strings behind the bar, or slanting, or all of the above? Sounds great. I can’t even do that with pedals and levers......

Nelson Checkoway wrote:Wow these sound great Bill. Beautiful fat changes. What steel are you playing and how are you getting such sustain? I find that to be the biggest challenge on slow material as most PSGs have more natural sustain.

thanks nelson. over the last 15 years or so since i have been posting, the guitars come and go. this was recorded on a 12 string guitar. extended leavitt tuning...6 strings of the leavitt tuning with 6 more added strings.

but...in regards to your "challenge", a lap steel guitar should have just as much "natural" sustain as a pedal guitar. the impediment to achieving that sustain is usually something that most lap players avoid....that is an instrument that has enough mass and construction features to give it that sustain. i prefer heavy guitars. they sustain better. i also do not recommend any guitar that has the area under the machine heads totally cut out in order to easily mount the machine heads. they flex in that area and sustain suffers. i have made my own guitars for years. heavy old seasoned maple.

also, the pedal players sometimes give you the "illusion" of sustain by the use of the volume pedal. i dont use the volume pedal so i only have what the guitar gives me in regards to sustain. with the volume pedal, you can set your normal volume at about a third or so of the pedal travel. then when you hit the note, you slowly bring the volume pedal up as and note dies out on the guitar. that is a nice technique to use. i just havent learned to get comfortable with that.

do you use the volume pedal?

Thanks Bill. You confirmed my suspicion about density and natural sustain. Yes I use a volume pedal and I play both Emmons (D-10) and Sho-Bud (Pro-1) pedal steels, tending to get sustain more easily than on my lap steels. I’ve been working on some slow songs on my Emmons 8 string lap steel with my Sho-Bud volume pedal and I’m still not getting PSG-like sustain. The Emmons lap steel has their pedal steel pickup (the 8 pole version) but it lacks the mass and aluminum neck of the D-10. I have a solution to try—I have a Remington D8 console—super dense/heavy and it has the George L pickup (I need to pull it from storage, as I recently moved). I suspect I’ll get a much closer sustain to what I’m looking for.

You’re incredible, Bill! Definitely saving this post for listening to later.

What’s great about your tracks, Bill, is the inventive tuning (extended Leavitt) you are using to allow for some if those close intervals that, together with the right slants and ringing sustain give an uncanny illusion of combined bar and pedal/knee lever travel.

I also play a heavy ‘58 Magnatone lap steel —almost 2” of solid black walnut—with the Paul Barth pickup. It has a more vintage tone than I’m seeking on these PSG-inspired tracks, but it may possess the sustain I’m looking for. Will try the Maggie and the Remington.

Dave Zirbel wrote:Do you remember if you were pulling strings behind the bar, or slanting, or all of the above? Sounds great. I can’t even do that with pedals and levers......

hey dave. i dont use any slants. never got good enough to make them sound nice. what you hear mostly is moving lines under open strings. thats a technique that is not utilized as much as it could be with lap steel. i have guitars with 12 and 14 strings, so when i worked out this tune, i made sure the key was such that there would be plenty of open strings to let ring and do some moving "pedal pull" lines under them. also i have some diatonic strings on top in the tunings i use. that really helps out.

i do like the technique of pulling strings behind the bar. that works best when you have strings that are lighter in tension to facilitate that. i have also tried a piece of brass on my thumb to fret in FRONT of the bar. if i had another life time to work on the steel guitar, then i might have been able to get something done....

do i remember correctly that you have old fender pedal guitars? i like those things. have had a few. sold them, and last year i found a 60s model 400 to tinker with.

Bill Hatcher wrote:what you hear mostly is moving lines under open strings ...plenty of open strings to let ring and do some moving "pedal pull" lines under them. also i have some diatonic strings on top in the tunings i use. that really helps out.

Brilliant, Bill. I can see (hear?) how the open strings contribute to the PSG illusion ... and also add their ringing to the richness of the sustain. So Fine!!

Sounds great as always Bill.

Bill and Dave — Sounds like you’re both fond of Fender pedal steels. Guitar Center online may have a good deal on a 1964 Fender 800. That’s a good tough to find model—10 string with moving bridge fingers. Link is:

https://www.guitarcenter.com/Used/Fende ... 00&index=5

I’ve got some insane deals from GC vintage like ‘75 Sho-Bud Pro-1 3+2 for $899 and a Remington D-8 with a Peavey Profex 2 for $499!!! At $1099 I think the price on the fender 800 is pretty good and it looks OK in the pix

GC will ship to you or your local GC store for insanely low shipping fee where you can try it and return on the spot if it’s not up to par. Maybe worth checking out?

thanks for the tip. dave might be interested. i have the 400, and thats enough for me right now. i had the D10 fender in this style many years ago. sold it. the 400 i have was a good deal. someone had routed out the pickup slot and the original pickup was dead. i was able to fix the pickup by unwinding it and lucked out that the break was only a few winds into the pickup. i am going to use the extra routed out area and mount another pickup in and have a switch to use single coil or humbucker.