The Steel Guitar Forum

Seeing as I am retired, and feeling my mortality, I would like to share my first, and tremendously important stage of my entry into the steel guitar world.
Fresh out of the Marine Corps, 21 years old and finding out at that time you couldn't spit without hitting a guitar player, I made the change to steel.
I went to Manchester, NH to the music store there and traded(get this) my '61 Les Paul Jr. w'tremolo and a 63 Ventures model Mosrite for a single-neck Sho-Bud Pro I.
Yup, they saw me coming, but the real bit to this story is, I sweated over that guitar for about 2 1/2 months and was playing with a bass gtr. and drummer and they finally said, 'what the heck are you doing under the guitar at every practice?' 'Course I said, 'gotta tune these pedals'. It was actually the drummer(used to wrenches and mechanical junk) who pointed out the 'allen wrench ends on those rods there'.
Yup, first real revelation in steel playing for me.
Not quite so embarrassing now that I'm 120 years old.
But in 1972 Hampton NH there was NO information about anything. I could only tune it because it came with a single sheet of paper that told what the open tuning and the pedals needed to be tuned to
Learning and playing will never be a piece of cake, but ya'll are in the 'information age' and certainly can get after it right away...good luck, and break a leg!

Great story, Jeff!

I recall you from Jimmie Crawford's basement many years ago.

Great story Jeff. Thanks for sharing.

Sounds a lot like how I started. A Fender 1000 and the original manual that came with it. Played the A6 tuning for a year or two before I realized that nobody ever really used that tuning much. I had zero interest in computers at the time so I just listened to Buddy, Speedy, and Mooney records and tried to emulate. I also traded a Les Paul to get that Fender, was 21 years old, and lived in the middle of nowhere in Vermont (which is just NH upside down).