Category: b0b’s steel guitar blog

Over the past few months, I’ve developed a new steel guitar copedent and applied it to a Desert Rose “Vintage Pro” S-10 steel guitar. It’s a D6th tuning, but the top 2 strings are like the E9th. It includes the standard pedals from both the E9th and C6th tuning of a double-neck pedal steel. I’ve…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

I’ve been making videos of my previously recorded steel guitar music. You can browse the entire collection at https://vimeo.com/showcase/9009700. Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

(Originally posted on The Steel Guitar Forum discussion, copied to here.) Electronic tuners didn’t exist in the 60s. Everyone tuned by ear. The better your ear, the more in tune you were. Before I got an electronic tuner in the mid-70s, I tuned by ear using harmonics. That is what we refer to as “just…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

Tuning down a step to D9th will give you more low end, but it doesn’t go as low as a standard 6-string guitar. Here’s what the “almost standard” E9th 3+5 changes look like dropped to D. If you add the “Franklin” pedal, you’ll have a G on the 10th string. That’s close, but no cigar….

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

I really love playing my little 6-string Rickenbacker in D/G tuning. So I got to thinking, how would I set up that tuning on a 6-string pedal guitar? The copedent I came up with requires a tunable split. Without split capabilities the F# to F change would have to be pedal 4. It’s the C6th P6…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

For a decade now I’ve been playing all styles of music on a D6th pedal steel. My current and probably final copedent has 6 pedals and 6 knee levers (click here for details). That’s an unusual configuration, though – most 10-string pedal steels don’t have more than 4 pedals, and most players don’t need more…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

As I was learning about the space where pedal steel and music theory intersect, I made a slide rule out of card stock to help me understand. My dream was to have it manufactured and sell it to other steel guitarists. That never happened. 50 years later, I found the prototype in an old box…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

I’ve installed a new, cleaner-looking WordPress theme that works better on mobile phones and tablets. Some of the older pages under “Articles” and “Copedents” aren’t in the WordPress system, though. You’ll still need a large screen to view them properly. Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials,…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

On The Steel Guitar Forum, Adam Tracksler asked about my hybrid D6th copedent: What would you use if you had 5 levers and 4 pedals? Which pedal and knee would you leave out? It’s an interesting question. I’d probably do a S-10 4+5 hybrid D6th like this: LKL LKV LKR P1 P2 P3 P4 RKL…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

These songs were recorded at a private concert on April 21, 2018. My 2017 Sierra S-10 pedal steel is way too loud in the mix because of microphone placement, but it does serve to demonstrate the swing side of the Hybrid D6th copedent and the excellent tone of this instrument. The amp is a Milkman…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

Fly on the wall recorder (Zoom H2) at Redwood Cafe, Cotati CA, 4/20/2018. I’m playing the new Sierra S-10 pedal steel built by Ross Shafer and tuned to D6th. I also used some effects pedals – the “organ” sound on “The Weight” is actually pedal steel through an Electro Harmonix POG2 and a Stymon Lex….

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

This web site (b0b.com) has been moved to a new server on the DigitalOcean platform. My Bohlen-Pierce site (bp.b0b.com) was also moved. The new server uses Nginx instead of Apache webserver software, and has a solid state disk (SSD) instead of a traditional hard disk. I’m pleased with the snappy performance. The plan is to…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

My trusted Korg AT-120 tuner bit the dust, so I bought a new Peterson StroboPlus HD. It was pretty confusing at first – I had to read the manual to make any sense of it. I play a D6th copedent tuned to meantone. My tuning numbers walk around the circle of fifths like this:  …

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

Here’s an interesting way to get around the circle of 5ths using 7th chords on the C6th tuning. You need to have a lever that raises your C’s to C#, and another that raises your A’s to Bb.  Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

Here’s how the original Sho-Bud crossover guitars were set up. They had 6 pedals and 1 knee lever, and a mechanical lever that switched everything from one neck to the other. A cool idea, but the implementation was sort of clunky. Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

from The Pedal Press, February 1979, Page 3 —- Whither the Future? What happened to all those steel guitar fans of yesteryear? One old fellow told me that he quit following steel guitar when pedals came in because that’s when they quit playing the melody. “How can you call it music without the melody?”, he…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

Someone might find these useful. Blank Copedent Charts.pdf (printable PDF file) Blank Copedent Charts.ods (OpenOffice Spreadsheet) Blank Copedent Charts.xls (Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet) Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/

These presets were developed with my Desert Rose pedal steel tuned to D6/G, a compromise tuning that is lower than E9th but higher than C6th. I ran the guitar through a passive Goodrich volume pedal, into the POG2, and then into a clean tube amp (Mesa/Boogie Maverick). I also tested the organ presets with an…

Visit our online Steel Guitar Shopper store for strings, equipment, music, instructional videos and materials, hard to find reference materials and rare items. https://www.steelguitarshopper.com/