New Purchase - I'm EXcited!!

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alexc

alexc

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 21, 2004
Messages
2,571
Location
Hobart
Hi All

I'm really excited by my new purchase - a mid 70s 'Sho-Bud' 'Maverick' pedal steel guitar  8) 8)

It's a beginner's model and near the cheapest of their range but I'm a beginner, so .. OK!

I decided why should I wait any longer ? and sure enough an ebay deal came up on a nice, single deck model - so I jumped! Pretty reasonable price considering that these things are not common where I live, way down south in Tasmania, Australia  :)

Been practising my slidey stuff on a steel Dobro style guitar, but this will catapult me squarely into the world of late '60s country - Gram Parson's and The Byrds style.

Just can't wait to put this fella thru some of my flagship DIYs

- fender style 'brown' preamps with vibrato
- pultec style eq
- fairchild style limiter or even the rca style, ua 175 style or a myriad of others  8)

-------

I'm going straight into my music room now to get some tracks up and running for when this guy arrives at my door  ;) ;)

I'm am so excited - and that's a GOOD thing  ;D ;D for someone who spent 3 weeks in the hospital over christmas    :eek: :eek:  (I'm better now!)

What a great planet this is!  Just a short step from the 'imagining' to the 'delivery'

Makes you realise however, thinking of the many in this world who have very little, just what a privilege it is to live in a stable, prosperous country.

Sometimes that can be hard to reconcile. But for now I'M EXCITED.

I'm already thinking what 'silent' pickup to replace the stock sure-to-be-noisey-as-hell pup on it.

I'm thinking some stacked humbucking blade types in a single coil form factor.
Maybe an active if I have space inside to play with.

Or not!

Cheers
Alec
 

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btw Cemal,

thanks for the utc traffo - it arrived a while back but I didn't get a chance to let you know.

Cheers
Alec
 
> catapult me squarely into the world of late '60s country - Gram Parson's and The Byrds style.

Hmmmmm..... Not to diss Byrds, but there's a LOT more to pedal-steel.

And I know that even though I spent most of my life in places where pedal-steel (C&W in general) was illegal (or so it seemed).

 
Well, you Do have to be careful. Either the tears or the beer can rust metal
and there's a reason it's called  " Hurtin " music ..............
 
Been practising my slidey stuff on a steel Dobro style guitar, but this will catapult me squarely into the world of late '60s country - Gram Parson's and The Byrds style.
Click to expand...

My buddy plays a sho bud and is a very big fan of Sneaky Pete. When you really listen to his recordings, the pedal steel is cutting - very treble-y. Not sure the exact recipe, but a sho bud into a twin reverb sounds fantastic. No other amp I've tried beats it for a clean steel tone. 

I'm already thinking what 'silent' pickup to replace the stock sure-to-be-noisey-as-hell pup on it.
Click to expand...
My buddy has the original pickup in his and it can have some single coil buzz. It's a pretty fantastic tone though. I would never think about replacing it.
It's tough with a pedal steel because you can't move it around as easily as a telecaster to find the quietest orientation. But it's manageable.
 
I got to work with Lanois once and had to source him a Sho-Bud.  Check out some of his stuff if you haven't seen it. I'm sure there are technically better players but I love his playing.

 
Sneaky Pete is the man in my world!  Surely, as PRR notes, there is a whole lot more out there in pedal steel greats, and I am learning more about them, but Sneaky Pete really 'pedals my world'.

----

As far as amps go, I have a few  - I'll be first trying my diy Super Reverb, which is like a Twin but good.
I'm no fan of the Twin ice pick to the brain treble - the Super is a lot more mid-rangey and the treble is quite easily controlled.

So that's my first choice.

I also have a diy Champ style which I use a lot for raw 'rawness' in a 5W package.
That will be good for 'Sneaky Pete' distorted style pedal'.

After that is a few others that may wind up being special with the Sho-Bud.

-----

The pup will surely be a major noiser - normally I replace them, but as dmp notes, it is an integral part of the sound.

BUT I just can't stand pickup buzz. I really, REALLY hate it.

I'll probably end up augmenting it somehow - until I see what the physical space available is like, I'm not sure. I think it would be a pair of blade stacked single coil, maybe active.

Problems will be 10-strings means a single pup won't span the string width, so a pair will be needed.

-----

Anyway - I can just deal with it and use a noise gate - the most likely solution!

---

Thanks for the slide/pedal player references - my education starts ... Now!

 
The pup will surely be a major noiser - normally I replace them, but as dmp notes, it is an integral part of the sound.
BUT I just can't stand pickup buzz. I really, REALLY hate it.
Click to expand...

For recording, the recipe we found was to record into a good tube DI (I used  DIY NYdave 1 bottle)
Use a good noise remover to sample and kill the noise (i.e. Waves, with a threshold control)
Then reamp through your amp of choice.  That works if the noise is pretty low - if it is really bad it might need some work.
By removing the noise before reamping, things get smoothed out and it sounds great and natural, pickup buzz free.

FWIW, I compared a '70s twin to a '64 deluxe reverb, a '67 pro reverb, and a DIY 5f6A build, and the twin sounded the best. The ice pick to the brain seemed to work for pedal steel.
 
Thx dmp - that technique sounds like it can be most effective. I will try exactly that.
I have a wide range of DIs to pick from too  8)

I'll let you know which of my amps and recording chains sounds the biz when the Sho-Bud arrives in a week or so.

In the meantime, I'm collecting some pedal steel teaching resources - I've a lot to read, watch and listen too. ;) You Tube is pretty effective as a teacher!

 
> making (historic) C&W illegal should be a crime

This may not make sense in Hobart.

From Philadelphia to NYC there are NO country radio stations. I believe this is true to Boston. You have to drive past Pittsburgh; suddenly the clear-channel country stations come in. It's country through Kansas City and over the Sierras into Bakersfield (inspiration for the Dead and Byrds); but LA is (or was?) country-free radio.

There IS country music in the Philly-NYC area but it is kept out of sight. Drop into a tavern out in the Jersey Pinelands and half the time it's country music. (The Pines are, or used to be, a Different World.)

Perhaps like Hobart? Google finds a welding company and a minor city in Indiana before it finds Hobart Tasmania.

> What a great planet this is!  Just a short step from the 'imagining' to the 'delivery'

Leon McCullough says "There was no one to teach me in West Plains; absolutely no one! There was not a steel guitar within a hundred miles, and no one even was real familiar with it."
 
Visiting the grand ol' US of A is on my bucket list, for a historical roots music tour.

The whole story of american music is so fascinating to me - it's like nearly everything I love in music, exception classical and spanish guitar.

Delta blues, folk, country, blues-rock, folk-rock and country-rock - it's as if the whole of the modern world of music was developed there.

Not to mention the story of jazz, also intimately bound up in american history.

Hopefully I'll do it one day :)

---

You're right about Hobart :) It's pretty insignificant on the google stage, let alone the world!

I can't think of a single notable contribution to the world that this region has made.

It's all about low population density, cheap living costs, wonderful clean food, water and air and ..

..... there it is - 'Forestry Products' - trees everywhere. The sort of trees that make fine, clean air as well as awesome timber products, including great tone woods.

And my little part of it is insignificant compared to the capital city Hobart even!

One other thing that is great here, is the roads are good, empty and interesting to drive. At this timne of year, I take the hard top off my old V8 Merc SL and barrel around the country side without a care in the world.

We do have annual Folk Music Festival in my sleepy little town of Cygnet, south of Hobart. It was on last weekend. Lots of banjos, fiddles, guitars, slide and pedal and so on.

It's growing bigger every year and the town fills with vintage cars, motor cycles and folk loving folk.

Surely there's worse places to be! And I have the only recording room in town  ;D

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Anyways, whenever I read your posts PRR, I get a hankering to travel to the US of A and immerse myself in roots music.

Cheers
 

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