Ernest Tavares pedal steel 1940s

Cody Farwell · From: Sunland, CA

A couple days ago, I acquired Ernest Tavares's home built pedal steel guitar from the 40's.
Still learning about the instrument & will upload a video in the near future on how it works. For now, I thought I'd share some pictures of the guitar.

Ethan Shaw · From: Texas, USA

Super cool! The guys in the non-pedal section might actually be more interested in this than a lot of people that hang out in this section, even though it's technically a pedal steel.

Lee Baucum · From: McAllen, Texas (Extreme South) The Final Frontier

Lots of good info on this old thread:

https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1574279
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Joe Krumel · From: Hermitage, Tn.

Love the photos. We play an instrument that seems to still be evolving. Love these early labors of love. Look forward to some future posts.

Dave Zirbel · From: Sebastopol, CA USA

Very cool!!
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Levi Gemmell · From: New Zealand

Amazing stuff, dude - great to see it posted here and look forward to other posters chiming in.

Ernest and his brother are right there at the heart of it all, Western Swing and Hawaiian, builders and players of major significance. He taonga tuku iho!

If you need to move on that Wright Custom to make room for your new acquisition, you know who to call... Wink

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Justin Shaw · From: Ontario, Canada

Wow that's great! It looks medieval in the best possible way. So cool.

Rick McNamara · From: Michigan, USA

Cody,

To me Ernie and his brother Freddie were the brains in Leo Fender’s foray into PSG. You can see Fender design elements in this guitar. Not surprising though that the guitar is not in a museum or part of a Fender innovations collection.

It seems like the Tavares brothers got lost in history as Gene Fields took over design of PSG at Fender.

I still wonder what might have been for Fender had they continued to evolve the cable pull system instead of going in another direction.

A while back Fender had a celebration of sorts and made no mention of having built a PSG.

Thank you for sharing pictures of the guitar. Please remember it for what it is-a part of the history of PSG.

Rick McNamara

Ron Funk · From: Ballwin, Missouri

.......interesting

looks like both the pickup and tuning pegs are at right hand end of the steel (?)

Donny Hinson · From: Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.

Kilin Reece · From: Hawaii, USA

Aloha all,

This is a fantastic find! We are currently building the Pacific String Museum and Digital Pacific Music Archives in partnership with the C.F. Martin and Fender Guitar Companies, Hawaiʻi State Archives, Bishop Museum, set to go live January 2023. We are currently curating a digital gallery in honor of the Tavares brothers, if possible we would be very interested in featuring Ernestʻs Pedal Steel. Please feel free to contact me directly, kcpstrings@gmail.com, or 808-387-4583

For those interested, our non profit website is here: www.kcpstrings.com

Mahalo nui, -Kilin Reece

Executive Director
Kealakai Center and Pacific String Museum

Tim Toberer · From: Nebraska, USA

Quite a piece of history you have there! I would be interested to see a shot of the underside of the changer. Can't wait to learn more.

It reminded me of the guitar in this post https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=124671 I wonder if this one is around somewhere? This one looks a bit more complicated with 7 pedals and 2 leg levers?

Ron Pruter · From: Arizona, USA

Never have I seen a pick up mounted upside down. Probably a Tele neck pu. Should work fine.
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Brian Lee · From: Washington, USA

Amazing find Cody Farwell! Thanks for posting the great link on Ernest Tavares too Lee Baucum! It's pretty fascinating.

One thing that's interesting to me is the similarity of the cable/pulley arrangement to the Bigsby pedal steel cable arrangement. The write up in the link from Lee indicates that Ernest's pedal steel was finished at the end of '46, and that he was playing it on gigs in So Cal through '47, including on a '47 recording. From the Bigsby book it sounds like the first pedal steel he produced was Speedy West's, delivered in Feb '48. I wonder if Ernest's guitar that you've acquired was a concept inspiration for Speedy and Bigsby? Bigsby's mechanical implementation is at a very different level, but the concept's similar. It then carried into the Fender steels after that with Freddie and Ernest working with Fender. It's fun to think about how ideas developed. Very interesting rig you've got there! Seems like it should be in a museum...Thanks for sharing it here!
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