The Steel Guitar Forum

Anyone know anything about Junior Brown's double neck, standard/steel combo. It appears to be a Fender Telecaster attached to a Stringmaster 8, even though I realize Fender didn't make a Stringmaster in a single neck. Does Fender currently make this guitar in their custom shop?
It does offer convenience to someone who plays both instruments.

Jim,
I have seen the guitar within 2 to 3 feet when Junior Brown was preforming at a club in Memphis, TN that he preforms in quite often. The only parts of his guitar that came from Fender is the neck of the standard guitar, the fret board and keyhead of the steel guitar. The whole instrument is custom made. There was an article in Guitar magazine sometime back that gave more details
and who actually built the guitar for him
Maybe someone else can remember the exact date of the magazine. I am sure you can get a back issue somewhere. The pickups on the steel guitar look as if though they were custom wound. and through his sound system it does sound good. The back has a number of special effects switches that are push button I do not know what they all do but
if you get a chance to see him perform he puts on a great show LOUD BUT GREAT!!!!!!!



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Hey Jim; Fender did make a single-8 stringmaster pick-up design but it is called the Fender-8 deluxe; I have one and so do many others. Juniors first guit-steel was the Fender Deluxe-8 built onto a cut out body of a Fender telecaster and the neck of the Tele is a tele neck. His first guit-steel was built by a couple of friends of mine and the Fender Deluxe-8 is dated one month from mine:>3/58 and mine is 4/58.
The Guit-steel your seeing now is the custom built one that evolved from the original one and has several changes including the pick-ups; but some of the Fender features like metioned; are original Fender parts.
I just built a new steel that looks almost identical in design to the Fender-8 deluxe; except mine is a 10-string and made out of different wood and brass for the metal parts and a few other little; I call improvements. But nevertheless; Juniors new Guit-steel can look like the original one; which was made out of two original Fender guitars; but can also not have any original Fender parts at all> but his does.
Hope that helps and if you have more questions about Junior; yell back at me cause I've know Junior for quite sometime and he is the reason I ever played a Fender Steel guitar.
Junior and I also played in the same band together for a while with "Gary P. Nunn" and I used to ask him tons of questions.
Ricky

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Ricky Davis
http://hometown.aol.com/sshawaiian/RickyHomepage.html
http://users.interlinks.net/rebel/steel/steel.html
sshawaiian@aol.com

<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Ricky Davis on 17 May 2000 at 09:50 PM.]</p></FONT>

ok...both GuitSteels were made by Michael Stevens Box 1082 Alpine TX 79831...The First Old Yeller is a custom body, the steel is Fender Stringmaster parts, the guit has a Fender Bullet neck w/Duncan Fat Strat PU in Bridge, Mustang in Middle, neck is Fender 6 string Steel PU....Big Red, has custom Neck and Body, has a Sho Bud 8 string PSG PU in each body, As well as one Stringmaster PU in the steel w/ Fender hardware, the guit has Neck and Bridge PU same as Old Yeller....I think,
Mike

Not to let any cats out of the bag, but Dave Peterson and Paul Warnik, of the "Bigsby Reissue" fame, are building a Bigsby-style Guit-steel for Jr.

Junior also has one of their T-8's, non-pedal.

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Herb's Steel Guitar Homesite

Have you contacted Ted Smith at Melobar guitars? He's got a double neck model, tele-style w/a lap steel neck.

Actually I've got to correct you on the set up Chris, it's a Licensed Fender Tele' neck with Dad's Patented Melobar neck on the bottom. Difference being you can walk around with the guitar and instead of reaching over the top of the standard neck to reach the steel neck as the Gitsteel, you reach under the standard neck for the Melobar neck and both necks play in normal guitar position.

We've built close to 20 of them (2 in production now makes 20), and to stress how natural the necks play-I know of 3 players that used them on-stage the day they got them. That's the big thing we stress in building them is to make them feel like a normal guitar.

Note on Jr.--WOW what a player!!


Ted