Pedal Steel Music

Hello fans and fellow players,

The world of steel guitar up until about 12 to 15 years ago was very fluid when it came to designing and building new steel guitar models. People still today look at an old Sho-Bud and try to figure out what year it is by certain features on the guitar. This is a frustrating thing to try to do because design changes happened as they were figured out and not because the year changed. As I said, design changes were fluid.

Of course, some big basic changes will help identify the decade, like most Permanent guitars were built before ’64, but not all of them. Most Baldwin guitars that Sho-Bud built were built from ’66 to ’69, and were built alongside some Permanent guitars and almost all of the Fingertip guitars. So here we have three different guitars being built by Sho-Bud at the same time.

I see people on the forum trying to figure out what year their Fingertip was made because of certain features one individual may have on his guitar and letting everybody know what year he bought it, but because features were added or subtracted at any given time, this doesn’t necessarily indentify the year.

Emmons guitars can be even more confusing to identify. The end castings for the push pull guitars were stamped with serial numbers when they were cast and then stacked up on a shelf in the assembly shop. They would cast several years worth of end castings at the same time and they were not necessarily used in order, they just grabbed whatever was within reach. There were even many end castings that were made with no numbers at all.

As far as experimental Emmons guitars go, there were plenty of them and they were a combination of any parts that were available, not necessarily part of any grand design. I remember Ron Lashley building a double ten keyless guitar with both necks the same level. But he never made a second one.

Many times when a customer would ask for a specific feature to be built into their own personal guitar, Ron would do it and quite often this guitar would end up on the market, sold to an owner that thought he had just a standard guitar from the factory.

I know of a bolt on mechanism guitar that was built and owned by a prominent Texas player, sent back to the factory, converted to a split neck guitar and then later on restored to a wrap-around guitar so it would come closer to matching the serial number of that era.

Folks that are trying to pinpoint exact building facts like they would on a mass produced automobile really are facing a difficult task as the history of these guitars is very muddied. Being a dealer in Nashville, Tennessee, I ran across these guitars on a regular basis. There was a standard model, but there were many experimental units.

Sho-Bud was very good about coming up with different changes to the bodies, mechanisms, keyheads etc. throughout the life of this brand. I remember going into the Sho-Bud factory one day and seeing a new keyhead design and asking David why he’s changing the keyhead design.

He told me, “To fit the new tuning keys that are available from Grover.”

This is another example of design being changed by necessity instead of by annual date.

I see people today that are trying to date their guitar by what tuning keyhead it has on it. Unless you want a wrong answer, ignore some of these details. We’re talking about some guitars back in the old days when all of these changes were taking place that really sounded incredible.

As far as numbers of guitars per year, in 1969 there were lawsuits flying all over the place at Emmons guitar company. Consequently, there were only about 50 double neck guitars made that year and that’s all. That makes the ’69 model of Emmons a lot harder to find, but these are wonderful guitars. Actually ’67 through ’69 are my favorites to play.

There weren’t very many guitars made before ’67. Most guitars that were made before ’67 were those that the neck wrapped around the changer. A few of these earliest guitars had cast aluminum changer parts, not particularly desirable because they are not particularly strong like small extruded parts are.

It’s amazing how many people will say while looking at an Emmons of early manufacture, “That’s not right and this isn’t right and I don’t know why that’s like that.” It may be perfectly legit and have been built by Ron and Fred themselves.

What early Emmons is the most desirable? Any of them. What early Sho-Bud is the most desirable? Any of them except the Baldwin Cross-over model. This is just my opinion here.

I feel that Buddy Emmons came out with some very good and constructive ideas in the early periods of the push pull design. Many of these guitars are showing up in private collectors and players hands. I’ve finally gotten to where I can pretty well identify all the strange quirks that were assembled into push pull guitars at the Emmons company.

I must admit that in talking to Ron Lashley and Fred Trogdon before they died, I learned much about the very early construction traits of these first guitars. I have been an Emmons guitar dealer and player since January of 1966.

There seems to be a growing population of people interested in the history and the details of the early guitars made by these companies and a couple of know-it-alls that really know very little about Sho-Bud and Emmons. Even the company itself today doesn’t seem to have much desire to keep the history straight.

I love these early guitars, the history of the guitars, along with their players and builders. This was a wonderful era and I am glad that I was a part of it. There are fewer and fewer of us that were actually there and remember the way it really was and I feel that I should help keep the record straight.

Back in the very earliest days, most of the Emmons guitars were finished with felt the color of red, but not all. As a matter of fact, some of the earliest rosewood guitars have brown felt under the guitar, but they all had felt of some kind, which actually wasn’t felt but was very short fuzzy strands of material from the carpet mills in that area. It looked great, was easy to apply and repair, however it seems like the factory was the only place it could be obtained.

Emmons was doing this while Sho-Bud was shooting the bottom with lacquer, either natural or in a few cases, black. But remember, all of the details were constantly changing through the early periods of both Sho-Bud and Emmons.

The early guitars of both of these brands are very collectible today because they are excellent guitars that sound as good as anything anywhere and they are rare and hard to obtain.

Check out our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to save you a lot of money.

The friend to all bar holders,
Bobbe Seymour
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour
www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

Listen To Steel Guitar Music Streaming 24 Hours A Day!

Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Closed Saturday and Sunday

Hello fellow players,

People ask me all the time how to install new nylon tuners on the end of their guitar because they cannot understand that you can’t just spin them on with your fingers. First of all, they are made out of nylon just so they will not tune very easily. That’s the deal. The harder they turn, the better your guitar stays in tune.

These nylons which is what we call them, are not threaded, but they cut their own threads as you screw them onto the pull rods of the guitar. Sure, it is hard to get them started, however if you do wish to make them a little easier to get started, you can run a number 29 drill a quarter of an inch down into the nylon or get a 6/32 tap and thread the nylon down to about a quarter to three eights inch into the nylon.

About anything you can do to open the nylon up slightly where it doesn’t really hang onto the rod extremely tight will be a good deal. Lubricating the rod and nylon with liquid soap or soap from just a plain bar will help get the nylon on the rod. Then as time goes on, the soap will dry out and the nylon will actually get tighter.

Nylons should last almost forever on the rod. The only thing that makes them need replacement is abuse. Don’t abuse them and you won’t need to replace them. Abuse is turning them too often and too far. A regular George L tuning wrench is designed to be used with your fingers and is a wonderful tool to use for installing and tuning these nylons.

When we send you new nylons, they are fresh, pure and virgin. If you don’t have the facilities to enlarge the end yourself, we can sell them to you already enlarged to screw on easier for a small additional cost. I personally like the nylons to come out to the end of the steel guitar because I hate standing on my head trying to look up into the end of a steel guitar during a show just to find the correct nylon to make a slight tuning adjustment.

Of course, if the nylon is too long, there’s nothing wrong with snipping the nylon to the right length or snipping the actual rod if the rod is too long. Or fix the whole situation once and for all by buying a p-p guitar. (Just kidding.) Let me know if I can ever help you more with this very minor problem.

Shot Jackson pedal installations from ’52 to ’57.

Mr. Shot Jackson, before the Sho-Bud guitar was ever built and before the store on Broadway was ever thought of, was putting what they called the E to A pedal on E necks of Fender and Rickenbacker steel guitars. Shot actually made a lot of money installing pedals that pushed the strings up at the keyhead to get the famous Bud Isaacs style pull.

Bud Isaacs used this on Webb Pierce’s smash hit “Slowly” in the early fifties. Bud did it on a Bigsby guitar, but there were many people around the world that wanted the pedal so they could duplicate this exciting new style. Many songs were being recorded in Nashville using this pedal. As a matter of fact, they started using this pedal in ’53 and of course, it is still being used today on the E9th tuning.

Some very early songs that were recorded with this pedal were songs like Jimmy Dickens “Conscience” and “We Could” and several more by Webb Pierce like “In The Jailhouse Now” and “More and More”, Faron Young’s “Sweet Dreams” and “I Miss You Already” and hundreds of other tunes done by players such as Buddy Emmons, Walter Haynes, Joe Vincent, Howard White and Sonny Burnett.

When I first went to Goodlettsville and opened up Steel Guitar Nashville thirty years ago, I figured I’d be running across several of these Shot Jackson modified guitars with pedals added, but so far in the thirty year history of the store, I have only had two show up.

Johnny Cox bought one helping to preserve the great history of Shot Jackson and Sho-Bud and I just bought one the other day that was pretty complete. On most of these guitars, the bottoms of the guitars are pretty well modified and they look like Swiss cheese with two holes showing on top in the keyhead giving the first clue to the fact that someone had installed a pedal back in the golden years.

Nothing has impacted the world of steel guitar or done as much for it as the style that this E to A chord pedal has done. Oh if I could go back to those days and start over! You might think to yourself, steel guitar must have sounded pretty lame back then, but nothing could be further from the truth. Buddy Emmons, Jimmy Day, Walter Haynes and many other Nashville players played some extremely exciting steel guitar with setups that were not very complicated at all and knee levers were way off in the future.

I didn’t think Jimmy Day was ever going to have a knee lever back in the fifties and early sixties. I still hardly think he needed it.

The guitar that I bought the other day is a ’52 Fender that Shot Jackson did this modification to in the mid-fifties and honestly, it works pretty good. The guitar itself is a very good sounding Fender Dual Professional with an added leg for stability for the pedal so it has two legs on the left end when you’re sitting behind it.

This guitar is fairly slow to setup and take down if you’re going to carry it in the factory case, however I have an employee here that had never seen one, but had no trouble setting it up, so it shouldn’t be any problem for any steel player.

This is a true artifact in the evolution of steel guitar history. You’ll have a hard time finding an old pro player that hadn’t seen one and didn’t know about them. This one is all chrome plated with little rollers in the rods that push the strings up. This definitely should not be a string breaker.

Click here for pictures: www.steelguitar.net/fender.html

Check out our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to save you a lot of money.

The friend to all bar holders,
Bobbe Seymour
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour
www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

Listen To Steel Guitar Music Streaming 24 Hours A Day!

Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Closed Saturday and Sunday

Hello fans and fellow players,

I’m going to tell you a story today that proves you should always stay up on your playing game because you never know what kind of a job offer is going to come along. I was sitting at home one evening when my cell phone started to ring. I did not recognize the number but decided to answer it anyway since the commercial was on, on the TV show I was watching.

The strange voice on the other end said, “Mr. Seymour, I’m in a rather well-known rock n roll band from England and I am getting married next Saturday and need some entertainment. I asked where and he told me and I recognized the address as being a very posh section of Nashville.

So I said, “I guess the whole bands gonna be there, huh?”

He explained, “Yes, this will be a pretty high class event with several record label types being present along with several international tour managers.”

I said, “Just exactly what do you want me to do?”

He said, “I want you to play in the reception area and I promise you’ll enjoy it.”

I said, “Well, it doesn’t sound like a good deal to me, but what does it pay?”

He said, “Twelve hundred dollars.”

To which I replied, “Yes. You’re right. I think I’ll enjoy it.”

I said, “Who am I going to be working with?”

His reply was, “No one.” He said, “You’ll be doing a solo.”

I said, “And you know I play steel guitar, right?”

His answer was, “Oh yes, we are all very familiar with you.”

I said, “Well what do you want me to play? What style? Do you want me to play just Hawaiian?”

He replied, “Oh no. Play everything.”

Well anyway, this was about the strangest request I had ever gotten, so here I was accepting a job to play a solo in the middle of Nashville’s finest, ritziest section for cream of the crop, big money international musicians and to do so for a pretty good sum.

I started to say no, then I said, “Well, give me directions and the exact time and I’ll be there.”

I showed up about an hour before and unloaded my guitars, amps and anything I thought I might need to dazzle, amaze and bewilder the educated audience. As I was walking inside with my first load of equipment, I was shocked to have some folks come up with a strange accent that seemed to be quite familiar with my playing.

After setting up, they invited me to the food bar which was very exotic, but it didn’t take long to get used to the caviar, lobster and oysters Rockefeller. I started off my part of this extravaganza playing some big band tunes as soft and sweetly as I could. Here Comes That Rainy Day, Tenderly, Misty, until somebody said, “Pick it up and give us some excitement.”

So I said under my breath, “Here I am all by myself playing a wedding reception for what could be known as some of the world’s finest rock musicians with support teams, their record label executives and they want me to play something a little swingier.”

So I did some Sunshine Superman, Moanin’ and Watermelon Man and about the time the crowd was really getting into what I was doing, they said, “Hey, we have a country singer here that we hired also, named Clay Canfield.”

I said, “Good. Get him out here.”

I had never met Clay and was not familiar with his work, but he came out in an old slouch, beat up cowboy hat, dressed clean, but looked like he’d just gotten off the range. He said, “Do you have an amp I can plug into?”

I thought “Uh oh. This can go either way now.” But the crowd started screaming, “Good. Do some country.”

Clay broke into Workin’ Man Blues. The crowd started dancing, clapping and yelling. I thought, “Holy cow! They aren’t used to hearing this, but they are loving it.”

Clay and I entertained them together for about an hour and a half, then Clay went on break to hit the exotic food bar again. I had filled up but decided to make the announcement that I’d play anything they wanted to hear. I had many people line up with suggestions, many of which were rock songs from the sixties. Everything from Magic Carpet Ride to I’m Not Lisa.

I thought, “I’ll never be able to pull this off.” But forty five minutes later, most of the crowd had pulled their chairs up as close as they could to me, watching my hands and feet and knee levers and seemed totally fascinated.

Then Clay came back and we totally ruled the night. Even though I had great success, I was very glad Clay was there. Finally about one in the morning people started wandering up and telling us good night. We finally started shutting down, they handed me my check and Clay got his check which both checks were for twelve hundred dollars for a total of twenty four hundred dollars.

I told him we should form a duo and go on the road. He replied, “As long as we can do these things around Nashville, we don’t need to.”

Naturally these great jobs don’t happen every day, but I’ll have to admit they are very lucrative. Between the friends I met, the food and the money, I’m glad I’m a steel guitar player. The moral of the story is, keep your chops up, be prepared to do any job at any time and let everybody know that you’re able to do any job at any time and I’m sure some nice surprises will come your way.

Summertime is a great time to be surprised with wonderful jobs from out of the blue. If you’re in the union in your local area, you might let them know what you can do or what you want to do and possibly they can steer some work your way. Just don’t expect every job to be a Ray Price sound alike band or gig.

You don’t have to be a professional musician to have a lot of fun and make some decent money with your guitar. Just have the right attitude and say yes to everything. Just remember, it is your practicing alone at home by yourself where you can learn all these things you need to know to play solo jobs.

Effects can make your guitar exciting if you use them correctly and learn a lot of different kinds of music. There are some wonderful blues, rock standards and classic songs that everybody will know and you can be highly loved and pretty well paid for playing them at times.

Guys, give me some feedback here. I’d like to find out how much interest there would be if I did a series of videos showing how to do solo gigs and what specific questions you would like answered if I did do such a series.

Check out our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html and we’ll try to save you a lot of money.

The friend to all bar holders,
Bobbe Seymour
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour
www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

Listen To Steel Guitar Music Streaming 24 Hours A Day!

Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM – 4PM Monday – Friday
Closed Saturday and Sunday