The Steel Guitar Forum

I got a call here in Atlanta to play the opening of a new show. Some group is putting the "Color Purple" to music in a Broadway style theatrical setting. The show will go to Broadway probably sometime next year.

Anyway I do a lot of these Broadway shows, but this one called for a lot of bottleneck guitar. I took one of my flat top guitars, a nice mahagony/western ceder top Rhyne instrument and shimmed the nut up and installed a high saddle in the bridge and used a Shubb/Pearse SP2 steel slide. I play it laying in my lap. I have a Bill Lawrence soundhole pickup in it. Man the sound is just great and is a hit with the show writers.

Anyone here ever use just a straight flat top guitar for gigs or for recording? Very nice sound, especially in the low mid register. I just have it tuned to standard guitar tuning as all the written out parts are notated as a guitarist would read them.

"Anyone here ever use just a straight flat top guitar for gigs or for recording?"

I've got a cheap flat top that I raised the nut and saddle on and use for experimenting with tunings. It's a lot of fun.

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I have a '30s May Bell parlor guitar that I got cheap on eBay,- I've brought it with me along with my weissenborn on a couple of studio session, and ended up using it on several tracks. It's just such a special little guitar with a sound all it's own, the kind of instrument you just have to fall in love with.



Steinar

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www.gregertsen.com

I have a small body True Tone that I use in the studio and it works great. A friend of mine who plays, repairs and builds acoustic and electric guitars, is going to build me a 8 string acoustic slide. I can't wait.
Tony

I saw Roy Rogers a few months ago, he played most of the night on a small flattop with a humbucking hanging off the fingerboard end, tuned to E. He plays bottlneck, btw. Through a mesa boogie and a leslie speaker.

And the little cheap plywood guitars seem to sound better, IMO. Some sound WAY too close to a Weissenborn...

I use two big, old National archtops for most of my bottleneckin'. A 51 New Yorker (the pickguard is kinda shaped like the Empire State Building), and a 55 Debonaire. Both have great sounding pups, the Deb's was rewound by Jason. I don't think I would call playing a guitar in your lap "bottleneckin", but I guess a lot would depend on style. JB

You're absolutely right, Stephen. Some of those ~$100 eBay Oahus sound terrific. If you buy a dozen or so of them, there's likely to be a winner in the bunch ... and you still will have spent less than what Roy Rogers' Martin would set you back.

Your results may vary.

(By the way, one of the worst guitar choices I've ever made was shipping that MayBell to Steinar after he had it sent to my house. It is a superb little guitar.)

Why not play actual bottleneck?

-Travis

actually play bottleneck?

then we have to kick you offa here for not beibg manly...

kidding, Sonny Landreth and Derek Trucks rule - but it aint steelin IMO

Putting a soundhole pickup in old cheap Harmony Stellas makes one of the coolest / authentic sounding blues slide or lap-slide guitars going. They also get quite nicely excited in a speaker field.

They're also great for authentic "spanish" guitar acoustic blues, particularly open tuned, ...but can be a bit of a challenge with fingering and intonation playing above the 8th-or-so fret; Although, the "challenge" of woodshedding and playing blues on a raw but decent cheap guitar "reduces" "advanced" technical playing to the authentic blues style / sound that was derived allot from cheap guitars; Indicative in the difference between the styles and sounds of Lightnin Hopkins that are right at home on old cheap acoustics and Freddy King's more "advanced" electric guitars! Similarly, Houndog Taylors style on electric guitar was derived allot from playing on so many different Teiscos he favored; Often hocking one after a gig for booze and able to buy another cheaply at a "hock shop" for the next gig.

Hmmmm, ...I am now reminded of Arkie Blue's gigs swooning the girls around Bandera dude ranch pools back in the 1960's ...with old favorite acoustics that he often poured drinks for right down it's sound hole (part of the great swooning personality / techniques he had) ...and even known to jump right in the pool with an old acoustic more than a few times! What a great figure to look up to for a 15 year old geetar sideman !

.....IMHO.

Aloha,
DT~

<SMALL>Why not play actual bottleneck?</SMALL>

That's a very good question Travis [insert long silence here]......
I used to love to play bottleneck, and it's been an important part of my musical 'arsenal' since the mid '70s. But something happened when I got serious about playing lap steel, and now I find bottleneck playing to be almost boring (my own playing that is, not the one of masters like Cooder and Landreth..). Last time I tried I even had problems playing it tune (!!!) something that has never been a problem on bottleneck slide before! I don't know, but I feel the tone and sustain of the lap steel is superior, even if I'm playing 'bottleneck licks' with a blues band.....

Steinar

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www.gregertsen.com


<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Steinar Gregertsen on 08 September 2004 at 05:37 AM.]</p></FONT>

I have an old Oahu student model flattop with a high nut & heavy strings that I keep near my big recliner chair. It is not very loud, but has a very sweet tone. I can play it late at night without waking anyone. Sounds the best in open D, but I use it to "try out" miscellaneous tunings. Haven't used it for recording, but believe that it would sound fine.

Travis.

Most Broadway shows are presented as a guitar part with the player "doubling". Banjo, mandolin, acoustic, classical, electric, F hole archtop to name just a few. A good arranger/composer knows that one player will not be proficient in ALL of these different styles and types of instruments. What they are most concerned with is getting close to the style and the feel. So they write the parts to be played as best as can be by a person who indeed might not be a REAL classical guitarist or a REAL bottleneck player. The main goal here on this show is to set up a musical motif for a certain character on stage. The part is written in Aminor with the slides being the top of an Aminor chord and the rest of the part written as just "bottleneck style fills". Since the pieces that call for bottleneck style do not have any fretted sections at all, I decided to play them with a jacked up action flat top in order to get as much attack and volume as I could get. No one is really concerned that I am not using a real liquor bottle neck for a slide or a Stella flat top held the correct way or any of that. They just want to hear the sound of a couple of notes being played with a slide in as close to the bottle neck sound as possible.

The main gist of my post was how nice the flat top sounds doing this. I had never played an acoustic like this with a Shubb style bar before.

By the way, the gig pays about $1400 a week. We did the first preview, full run through show last night and things went pretty well. My "damage report" was one missed Bb note on acoustic and I owe the conductor a quarter note rest tonight for the one I ignored last night!

Fair enough.

-Travis

P.S. I really like the sound of a flat top with a raised nut also--have you heard any Kelly Joe Phelps?

Bill - bit of a delayed reaction to your posting. I use a flat top for lap steel. It's a converted Taylor twelve string with a high bone nut. Started out as a temporary thing while saving for a resonator but the more I play the more difficult it is to put down. Miking it for live work has been a little difficult since the body is so resonant that feedback can be a problem - I've got a L R Baggs i-beam pickup fitted but more recently have used a Sony ECM55 lavalier mic which is great for recording and with a decent eq I can notch the worst of the feedback out... but I'm waiting for a Sunrise pickup for my Larrivee and I've been told that I must try this in the Taylor so we'll see - On the subject of cheap guitars I agree wholeheartedly about how good some of these flat tops can sound with a high nut. I've got a cheap Aria which I converted to learn open G tunes - glad to see that others have travelled the same route - Cris

I have two- a '51 Kay and a '49 Kay Mahaogany, both archtops that are great. The '51 has a pickup in it, the '49 is acoustic. I tune the '51 to D major, and the '49 is the one I experiment with different tunings on. I picked them both up on eBay for real cheap....about $100.00 each.
If you ever get a chance to get one, you won't be disappointed.

Jay

Growing up in North Mississippi I learned bottle-neck on a plywood Silvertone from Sears Roebuck, later a Gibson J45. I would stick a kitchen match right in front of the nut to get higher action. Later when I wanted to play bluegrass and couldn't afford a resonator, I raised the nut higher and played lap style with a Stevens bar. The sound is nice, but the volume is less. However, a better guitar with a solid spruce top sounds even better to me, for bottle-neck or lap style. If you use a pickup or mic, then the volume is less an issue.

Robert Johnson played bottleneck on a regular guitar. And Elmore James played his most famous electric slide stuff on an acoustic guitar with a sound-hole magnetic pickup. Going the other direction, The Black Ace played incredible bottle-neck style blues on a square-neck National Tricone, and sang on top of that. He was so popular he had his own radio progrom in Texas. L.C. Good-Rockin' Robinson played B.B. King style electric blues on a Fender lap steel. Then there's Robert Randolf.

So you can do this anyway you want. I find bottle-neck on a round-neck better for accompanying myself, because of the ease of keeping the baseline and strums going with my thumb. But playing with others, especially if there is a bass player, lap style seems more versatile, especially for playing in different keys without retuning.

Speaking of different keys, the old Mississippi bottle-neckers made a capo called a gar-head, because it looked like the long rounded snout of a gar fish. They carved it out of wood, bone or plastic. It raised the action slightly and had a groove on the bottom to fit over a fret. The rounded tip made it easy to push it under the strings over the fret of choice. I recently saw Corry Harris use a gar-head (and refer to it by name) in a performance here at the Tin Angel. Somebody should tell Dunlop. <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by David Doggett on 06 October 2004 at 08:19 AM.]</p></FONT>

Harry Manx plays a Martin D size on his lap. You must check him out www.harrymanx.com
My first 'slide' guitar was my first, an old Silvertone acoustic with a butter knife handle wedged behind the nut.
Doug Moon (Captin Beefheart's original guitarist) showed me my first open tuning back in '67

Going back to something Travis said earlier in this thread "P.S. I really like the sound of a flat top with a raised nut also - have you heard any Kelly Joe Phelps?" - Yes, and what an inspiration - I saw him recently over here; doesn't seem to be playing slide much these days but his early records "Lead Me On" and "Roll Away The Stone" are a real treat and a great demonstration of precision playing on a converted flat top - Cris

An update--I took the very nice flattop I was using home. I replaced it with a $3.50 Stella flat top that I bought at a Goodwill store here in the Atlanta area. You all know which one I am talking about, the little one with the fake figure on the body and the star under the Stella logo. The sound of the Stella is much more in line with the sound of an old recording of a bottleneck player. It does not have the sustain or rich tone of a nicer guitar, but it has the right vibe and the lessor amount of sustain just makes you have to work a bit more and be a little more creative. I have more good comments on the slide stuff than I ever expected. I am sitting in the orchestra pit next to a staircase leading up to the stage. I just screwed a 3 inch deck screw in the stair post next to me and put a loop of leather in between the top two machine heads and when I am not playing the Stella, I just reach over and hang it up! I duct taped a piece of foam on the lower section of the post so the guitar would not bang up against it when hung up. Now if I could just get some more room for an end table, lamp, TV, etc. I could feel right at home.

Bill, sounds like a great gig. Maybe they'll take you to New York. I've been in the same situation many times for recording sessions. The best sounding flat top for what you're doing is a small body guitar, as many here have said. I would add that you don't even want a spruce top guitar for this gig. I used to use a 1939 Martin 0-15 (all mahogany) with a raised nut. That thing was just dripping soul and blues when played with a steel. You can pick up newer mahogany Martins pretty cheap.

Speaking of small-bodied Martins ... the best acoustic bottleneck sound I've made yet is on a 1943 Martin 0-18. Spruce top, mahogany back and sides, inlaid ebony truss the neck rather than steel due to wartime shortages. It's sweet, loud and totally balanced string to string. Right hand palm muting makes notes jump right out at you. It's the one acoustic instrument I could never part with.

Something Dan said..."I would add that you don't even want a spruce top guitar for this gig" - would you say some more Dan? Most of what I've learned about slide so far is by trial and error (coming across this forum has helped)and the flat top conversion was meant to be a jumping off point but I got hooked...just reading this thread has made me realise just how much of an innocent I am - Cris

Cris, I've nothing very profound to say, but mahogany topped guitars seem to really work better for blues and "old-timey" music than spruce. the reason is that mahog. seems to accentuate more of the middle frequencys while spruce brings out a fuller treble. This is not a hard and fast rule but varies from guitar to guitar. Mr DeVito's comments make a lot sense too. Mabe a big part of the reason my Martin sounded soooo good was it's small body. <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Dan Sawyer on 07 October 2004 at 07:25 PM.]</p></FONT>