Q for serious Dobro bar users - backslanted end?

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

I am finalizing drawing-up the soon-to-be-prototyped Greatest Bar on Earth. For me, a bullet end of sorts is an absolute requirement because, well, you know. But in looking at the preferences of the dobro-bros, they really like a really straight end, or even, one angled back 10, 20, 30 degrees. Really. Supposedly this results in "crisper" hammer-ons & pull-offs... (?) So imagine if you had a bullet round-nose bar with a handle sort of like a Stevens, Beard, Shubb-Pearse. But if you turned it around and the back end was perfectly flat, wouldn't this be acceptable? In other words, is the angled-backedness of the Scheerhorn, LapDawg etc. purely visual, merely meaning you can see the tip better? Over on Reso World, the Reso Hangout, Mommy's Reso Basement etc. they swing kinda deep, wide and wierd; i.e. is there really some reason the back-angled tips are ever more/better/crispier due to trigonometric, umm, free-range force vectors factored to the nth, etc.? As a heathen I can't seem to make an (angled) Lap Dawg do anything more zoomier than the (square) reverse end on a SP-1, though this is not my home pond I'm-a fishing in. My brain just can't seem to get convinced that a knife-edge angled-back sharpness on the tip of a bar... umm, actually works better. What IS "crisp?"

2) Retailers? Do dobro brobars, like Stevens, LapDawgs, SP-1,2,3, sell worse/as well/better than bullet-tipped bars? There's an easy way to warp the design into a second one, a one-bullet-tip/one-dobro-tip bar, but only if there's some "point" to it. I do understand that the opposite of crisp is soggy, but... if this is genuinely real - why?

Greg Booth · From: Anchorage, AK, USA

I have spent thousands of hours using a bullet nose on PSG and a pointy Tipton bar on dobro. I prefer to use the right tool for the job. For dobro playing that involves pull offs and tipping the bar up for single string fretting the pointy end is best. A round end won't make a pull off note with equal attack to a pick stroke. You can do a respectable pull off with a square end but it's a bit bulky to tip up without it tending to touch the next string. I used an SP2 for a little while as I was transitioning from PSG to dobro, but I found the rounded end to be of no use to me and a PITA when I would inadvertently hold it backwards and try to do a crisp pull off. Some might say the pointy bars make slants difficult, but don't tell that to 15 time IBMA dobro player of the year Rob Ickes. He's a forward and backward slanting fiend. I suppose it all depends on how and what you want to play on the dobro and that's fine. If you play any fiddle tunes or bluegrass or handle the bar like most of today's dobro recording artists it's best to use the same tools.

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Kathy Kallick Band
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Howard Parker · From: Maryland

1. I don't know of a reso bar that exceeds 20 deg. I think if reso/dobro isn't your primary gig you're underestimating how aggressive the contemporary styles are and how the pull offs are aided by a squared or angled bar.

2. I can only recall one small bullet bar, the Broz-O-Phonic tone bar. When I was in the (reso) business we maybe sold 4 a year. We probably sold 500 Beards, Lapdawgs, Scheerhorns, etc.

fwiw

h
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Greg Booth · From: Anchorage, AK, USA

I don't know why you would ever want a round nose for dobro playing unless you just can't get the hang of moving the bar across the strings vertically without the tip catching or submarine-ing. Most round bar users, myself included, will experience this the first time they try a pointy bar but with a little time that goes away.
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Greg
Kathy Kallick Band
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Howard Parker · From: Maryland

Here is a good representation of contemporary choices. This doesn't include any of the small boutique builders.

h

Mark Eaton · Posted 24 Feb 2015 1:48 pm

David, as far as the front tip of your Greatest Bar on Earth being bullet style on one end because, well, you know - actually I don't know.

Round bars, particularly beefier/heavier pedal steel bullet bars, impart to my ears anyway in the hands of some players sort of a "muffled" tone to a dobro. It's a sound I just don't care for.

I understand the kill-two-birds-with-one-stone approach in having each end be unique, but for me personally, I have no desire for a bar like that.

Dobro bars (my number one is a Scheerhorn stainless) give me a better control of dynamics and altering of tone when I want it.

It shouldn't take that long for most people newer to sharp-edge bars to get over the submarining (great term Greg!) business. It's just something to work on, like getting past the rookie stage of being able to confidently play standing up with a strap.

It seems like it would be quite a bit easier than being a novice guitarist and finally getting over the hump of being able to consistently play a clean sounding F major barre chord.

Though in fairness to someone new to the instrument it's difficult for me to imagine what it's like since I started with a Stevens steel on the dobro in 1976, so I honestly can't even remember anymore. Whoa!

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Mark

Tom Wolverton · From: Carpinteria, CA

What Greg said. 100%

the right tool for the job.

Otherwise, it's sorta like putting mountain bike tires on a road bike. Not ideal.
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Rick Abbott · From: Indiana, USA

Are any of these bars more quiet on the strings than the others?

To the OP: I would entertain a very well made bar with two useful ends. I play an sp-2 now, but it's a bit beat...looking for a new bar.
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Howard Parker · From: Maryland

The general consensus is that chrome plated bars are quieter than polished stainless.

Frankly, if you can hear any bar on the strings you are not picking hard enough.

h

Robert Allen · From: Tennessee, USA

I stock only the Stevens in the store and all new dobro students get a Stevens bar. Anyone wanting something beyond that isn't going to buy from me because they can get it cheaper off the internet and not have to pay the 9.5% tax. For both dobro and lap steel I use a custom stainless similar to a Stevens but with wood top made by Gary Swallows, the person who designed the GS line for Shubb. I play bluegrass on dobro, fiddle tunes, too, but unlike today's modern pickers, I don't do banjo picking on the dobro. No need to because I also play banjo and I appreciate the distinct sound of each instrument.

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

So it's the pulling off while tilting up that make the angle end more usable? That actually makes a great deal of sense! There's a nifty technique of playing single and/or double strings while using strings open both above and below the "fretted" ones; I've heard it from both Sonny Landreth and (more so) Leo Kottke. Among "horizontal" players, Ben Harper, Harry Manx are some of the few outside of Dobros that do (and Manx on his Mohan Veena, who knows which strings are which, they're all over the place). Obviously a bullet will facilitate playing pairs but in pulling off while angled, I can see where the wrist angle would tend to drive the motion away from you, at which point the clearance counts. Jerry Douglas and the like do have have the butt-end sky-high. Billy Robinson's bouncing with a fat bullet is deadly here, but he's the outlier, I guess!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl7DNHPMH0g

Mark van Allen · From: Watkinsville, Ga. USA

Hey, David, I would say it's more about what Greg mentioned in his first reply- while the angled bars do seem to make for sharper, cleaner ill-offs especially while tilting the bar fairly aggressively, the main thing is the clearance to the next string above the one you're pulling off/ hammering on from/to. For me at least, the angled bars are much better that way than the straight-ended Stevens. I alternate between Sheerhorn and EG Smith bars, and the pull-offs are more comfortable for me.
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Brian McGaughey · From: Orcas Island, WA USA

David,

With practice on dobro it is not out of the question to fret 2 strings at once and play open strings above and below the fretted ones using a straight end (Stevens) or angled end (Tipton) dobro bar.

Yeah it's tight clearance and you must angle the bar to the fret to intonate for the fact that the closer string is not pressed down as far as the further string but it's do able.

Greg Booth · From: Anchorage, AK, USA

There are a few passages in several of my videos where I fret strings 5, 4, and 3 with open strings above and below. The bar angle and pressure is critical to make it all happen.

My guess is that the hybrid multipurpose double ended bar might interest the steeler that dabbles in dobro but probably not the other way around.
_________________
Greg
Kathy Kallick Band
www.youtube.com/user/aksliderdobro

Peter Funk · From: Germany

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

Mr. Funk, I had actually taken a long look at your bar and it's mentally "in-the-mix." I actually even bought an old Epiphone lap steel basically just to get my hands on the bars that were included:

Fortunately I won the Ebay auction at a great price... so it's not TOO obsessive. You can see the grooves don't extend all the way to the end, which means you get the full bullet nose to work with. And Carter steel guitars had made and sold a couple of different yet similarly-configured grooved bars:

For some unaccountable reason, they left the edges of the grooves full-on edged, it wouldn't have taken much to make them far more comfortable. But I just sent some drawings off to a machinist, for an aluminum prototyping - there's no point in thinking about quantity until it's absolutely perfect. I must have like 100 bars or something, I have clearly veered off from just finding an O.K. bar into mild psychosis.... fortunately there's always someone somewhere who's even crazier!

But I have been alternating from a brass SP-2, a "normal"-size but fully hollow 1.0 X 3.375" steel bar with a bullet nose, a few of Diamond's lovely crystal bars... home-made delrin bars, a jumbo-sized "Chase"-patterned tapered bar, various brass lamp parts concocted together.... I play ten string C6th, and all those sort of interlocking "X"-patterned reverse and forward slants you can chase around can get your bar backwards real easily. Time will tell!

chris ivey · From: california (deceased)

boy, it seems too much knowledge is a dangerous thing listening to some of you.
luckily for me, i'm not such a great player that alot of this matters.
i've owned a dobro for decades and play it more casually than professionally.
coming from steel guitar i first used a bullet bar which obviously was limited. then used an old stevens bar which made more sense being easier to lift and control.
then i ended up with the shubb sp2 which works just great for me. it's heavier and the tone is good and i like the shape. hammer ons and normal sliding are fine. i do pull offs and never noticed a problem but it makes sense that a sharper edge will give more grab for those.
it's interesting that many of the popular models howard showed are as reasonably priced as they are.

Nakos Marker · From: Washington, USA

Jim Pitman · From: Waterbury Ctr. VT 05677 USA

slants - the case for a rounded nose being preferred even though I personally don't use one.

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