Pedal Steel Music

Hello fans and fellow players,

I want to pass on this email I got from a phenomenal young man that I’m proud to call my friend, Mr. Chris Scruggs. He says it all. I can’t add anything.

Hi Bobbe,

On the subject of Bigsby guitars, I just thought I’d let you know a six string “standard” Bigsby guitar with no name artist affiliation recently sold at auction for around $270,000. The reason for this is that the Bigsby standard guitar, originally designed by Merle Travis, was the precursor to all solid body electrics to follow.

The Fender Telecaster (first year 1950), Stratocaster (first year 1954) and Gibson Les Paul (first year 1952) all owe a debt of gratitude to the Bigsby guitar design of 1947.

Much is the same with Bigsby steel guitars. Can you imagine where pedal steel would have gone if it’s evolution ended with the Gibson Electraharp? The pedal steel playing style, design and sound has everything to do with P.A. Bigsby’s design, ingenuity and imagination.

A world with no Bigsby would mean no Sho-Bud, therefore no Emmons and therefore nobody else!

We are lucky as steel guitarists that people can still buy these highly significant, well designed guitars for the relatively low sum of $10K-$40K.

It’s a bargain compared to the $270,000 their six string siblings go for!

Your buddy,
Chris Scruggs

The only thing I want to add is a reminder about our current sale. Ten percent off all new GFI and all used guitars in stock. Free shipping within the 48 continental United States on all guitars. Free shipping within the 48 continental United States and free amp cover on all Peavey Nashville 112 amplifiers.

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

The friend of all bar holders,
Bobbe Seymour
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.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,

One of the first jobs I ever had in Nashville was with Bobby Bare. Bobby was quite a character, still is and doing well. His first release with him was under the name of Bill Parsons. He did a song called All American Boy. This was the story of Elvis Presley in his early career.

I felt I was working for a true superstar when I worked for Bobby. Thinking back at the guitar I was playing, he should’ve fired me the day I pulled it out on the first job. However, steel players everywhere were fascinated by it. It was a double neck with one neck being a 9 string Sho-Bud, the other neck being a 10 string MSA.

I don’t know what name I put on the front, but I remember how great it played and it sounded very good through the 100 watt Magnatone amp that I had. I built the guitar from parts that I collected from other guitars. Kind of like Johnny Cash’s Cadillac, one piece at a time.

I was thinking that other players must be laughing at me, but I guess they weren’t because that was 45 years ago and I still have people asking me about it. That was my first Nashville guitar.

The first guitar that I played in my western swing days was a double neck Bigsby copy that I built from parts that I got from casting parts from Billy Braddy’s double neck Bigsby, then wandered off into building the rest of the guitar while I was in Dallas setting up the MSA factory.

Billy and I took one neck off his double neck Bigsby, took it to the foundry and had another one cast identical to it. This guitar sounded astoundingly good. Tom Morrell was fascinated by this guitar, no matter how he tried, he never could beat me out of it.

I finally sold it to a Dallas musician named Bill, but I can’t remember his last name. It’s amazing how guitars can be copied from one another and still end up sounding very good.

The main guitar that I have today I have had for over 40 years. I got this double ten Emmons guitar from Jimmy Crawford back when he started his doing steel guitar setups. This guitar is probably the greatest guitar I have ever owned over all. Tone is still beyond astounding. I have done thousands of recording sessions with other people and about 30 instrumental sessions under my own name with this guitar.

The guitar is a black Emmons pushpull with 7 pedals and 7 knees. I remember taking it over to Jimmy’s house 3 or 4 weeks after I bought it and asked Jimmy to put some other kind of setup on it. He replied, “Very good. I’d love to.”

At that point, he put on an extremely hard setup to play, but it has provided everything that I ever needed, every chord imaginable on E9th and every chord imaginable on C6th. This guitar has been my bread and butter ever since.

I can get into what this pedal setup is but it would take too long to explain what everything is. It was very hard to learn to get into in the beginning, but now that I’m in it and have lived with it for so long, it’s much better than anything I had every imagined.

This newsletter is to answer many of you that have asked about my guitar and pedal setup over the years. I recommend that everybody stay with something more standard. That’s the way to learn, not playing something off the wall like myself or Doug Jernigan or Jimmy Crawford and others got into way back before standardization.

Many people have called or emailed me saying that they only get one paycheck a month at the end of the month and so I am extending our sale at their request. The sale is ten percent off all GFIs and used guitars in stock, plus free shipping within the continental United States. Also, ten percent off Peavey Nashville 112 amplifiers plus a free amp cover plus free shipping within the continental United States.

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

Your buddy,
Bobbe Seymour
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.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,

Bigsby steel guitars are now selling for prices all over the board. I have seen them as high as $40,000 down to as low as $10,000. I have some in stock for very low prices. The reason the prices vary is because I am about the only one I know that can do an original pedal setup on this guitar with the cables and original parts.

This is the only way to have a Bigsby. They can be setup to play very quietly and smooth with very little pedal pressure. We can also set them up to do anything with pedals. We have got two guitars on the Bigsby bench right now having pedal setups installed.

Naturally if you need an extremely complicated pedal setup, the price can be quite a bit higher. A simple pedal setup is one that involves only two pedal pulls and one that doesn’t do a lot of raise and lower. There is no limit to what we can do with pedals. We will always use new aircraft cable and new pulleys. Of course you know this applies to Clinesmith also.

The Clinesmith guitar I endorse whole-heartedly. I have two double tens in my personal guitars and they are personal favorites. They have replaced excellent Sho-Buds in my collection and also replaced the Bigsby. If anybody on this newsletter would like to see both of my guitars, I’ll be glad to get good pictures of both of them. They are the same except one has an aluminum necks and one has wooden necks.

If you happen to have Bigsbys, I sincerely doubt that the pedal setup on it will be correct for you. Don’t worry about buying a Clinesmith with any pedal setup you want on it. If you need to know how to contact Todd Clinesmith, contact him on the internet at www.clinesmithinstruments.com

Many people seem to have really enjoyed the letter from Bruce Zumsteg and I did myself. He’s a fine gentleman and a very brilliant designer. As a matter of fact, he may seriously be the smartest man I know when it comes to building steel guitars in this day and time. I sincerely have much admiration for him. It seems like many of you out there agree with me.

We just got a big shipment of GFI steel guitars in stock so I hope we have anything that any of you could ask for. This seems to be the most prominent and prolific steel guitar that we have had over the years. Like Bruce Zumsteg and Del Mullen, we love and will only deal with the highest caliber folks in the business and Gene Fields definitely rates as high as anybody we’ve ever dealt with.

Like myself, Gene has learned to type with more than one finger at a time, an advantage he has over me, because he still has all his fingers. These men that I’ve mentioned in this newsletter are all presidents of their own steel guitar companies.

I want to remind you about our “Thank God Fan Fair Is Over” and “Father’s Day” double sale. That’s 10 percent off our already discounted prices so you save double.

Ten percent off all new GFI and all used guitars in stock. Free shipping within the 48 continental United States on all guitars. Free shipping within the 48 continental United States and free amp cover on all Peavey Nashville 112 amplifiers.

I want to remind you about our “Thank God Fan Fair Is Over” and “Father’s Day” double sale. That’s 10 percent off our already discounted prices so you save double.

Ten percent off all new GFI and all used guitars in stock. Free shipping within the 48 continental United States on all guitars. Free shipping within the 48 continental United States and free amp cover on all Peavey Nashville 112 amplifiers.

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

The friend of all bar holders,
Bobbe Seymour
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.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