The REAL question about cabinet drop?

Stephen Gambrell · From: Over there

OK, I'm not a real good steel player, but I notice some strings go a tad flat when I push some pedals---And I'm a pretty good guitar player, and when I hold one string, and bend another against it, the held string goes a bit flat---especially with a vibrato tailpiece.
So the question REALLY is, what are we gonna do about it? It's there, sometimes we can hear it, sometimes we can't...It doesn't bother me on guitar, and it ain't gonna make me stop trying to play steel!
What do you guys think of pot-metal Sho-Bud parts?

Barry Blackwood · Posted 28 Jan 2006 9:48 am

Pot metal parts - whose brainstorm was that anyway? Ugh! At least, they're now replaceable.

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

Bobby Boggs · From: Upstate SC.

John Coop · From: YORKTOWN, IND. USA * R.I.P.

Donny H. You are right on the money about the "pot metal" crap!! A second week blind, deaf, toolmaker apprentice would have seen the short comings of trying to use this!! But then, I only spent 32+ years as a toolmaker!!! Sooooooooo much of the older "chicken track" welded stuff was'nt any better. Why would something with such beautiful bodies and such "tone" use such "crappy" hardware? Just curious. Coop

Tom Quinn · Posted 29 Jan 2006 12:09 pm

When did Sho-Bud start using pot metal parts? My Professional from the early 70s seemed pretty great...

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

INteresting Steve.

I'm from the opposite end of the speculum as far as "guitar/steel".

I've always played the "tuning game" tuning"straight up" just like the best of the guitar players I've taxed. The best ones seemed to innately bend their necks, and perhaps unconciously to achieve the proper "tuning blend", bending "up" to things, and minimizing "vibrato" and even on the wound strings being aware of pulling the string toward the bridge as in the old classical style when doing vibrato. As a long time steel player I use probably a combination of playing the things, intervals, and "bends" that sound tht best to me and have "proved up" over twenty years or so.

I'm finding that "it" comes pretty easily with the guitar thing to me.

Alot of it is having the confidence to "sell" it.

That's probably why I detest complex "tunin systems" as they can't help but create self doubt, the biggest killer of performance.

In the guitar vein, I had to work for a few years with a big guy that insisted on playing "rhythm guitar". He always played horribly sharp. The "real" guitar player even went out and bought him a decent Epiphone guitar. It of course was even more sharp than the poor old tele copy he replaced with it.

The guitar player tried setting it up himself, to no avail. I myself set it up a tad flat to compensate. Still nothing worked.

I happened to look over and saw what the problem was after he struck a bunch of notes, and I could hear it go audibly sharp. It was his huge ham sized forearm when it rested on the guitar.

I didn't play with them much more after that, but I set the guitar up WAY flat, and it was "better".

I think that unless you're talking a mechanically unplayable steel with too much slack in the roller axle, or a loose cabinet, it's mostly in the playing, just like a guitar.

Also as discussed, there is no setting intonation WRT the thickness of the strings on a psg. which throws about half the hoopla about exotic 'tunin systems out the window anyway.

I never even checked my PIII for twenty years of so, but after I did I had almost totally worn it out, and I noticed that it did get a lot worse in the last couple years.

Pot Metal?

I dunno. I think my PIII had poorly chromed fingers over god knows what kind of metal, and I played over two thousand gigs with it before I could no longer sand the grooves in the fingers out uniformly, Other than that the brass swivels had worn oblong in the changer arms, but it still worked.

Oh, John.

Part of Sho~Bud's history was Shot hiring REAL musicians that NEEDED work to weld those Bird****™ welds on the cross rods while they made enough money to get their families out of the station wagon. Similarly I"m sure with a lot of the machine work at times. I bless him and them, of course, and have always thought that just that was what put the "soul" into a lot of old Sho Buds.

Pot metal is as Pot metal does....

BTW, I LOVE what you've done with your improvements in the original SB stuff. Keep it coming! I might have some work to send your way on rebuilding my old PIII when I get time.

EJL

Ricky Davis · From: Bertram, Texas USA

Any original Sho-bud with hex crossbars and straight knee levers; were the "Pot" metal(last years of the 70's and on).
Ricky

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

Whew.. That lets me off, mine are round...

I wondered about the plated fingers that wore thru on my PIII, but like I said, they worked very well for a lot of years..

Anyhow, what I see of JC's work looks top of the line for sure!

EJL

Bobby Lee · From: Cloverdale, California, USA

Hey Eric, someone asked me this at the Arizona show: "If you tune straight up, how do you know when you're out of tune? When it starts to sound good?"

Jim Peters · From: St. Louis, Missouri, USA, R.I.P.

"The best ones seemed to innately bend their necks, and perhaps unconciously to achieve the proper "tuning blend", bending "up"...
I've been playing guitar for 45 yrs, and don't know any local(club) players who do this. If your guitar is properly set up, it rarely will play flat. Playing sharp is usually from too much finger prssure, many players inadvertantly do this.
There are a few local sax players, some well known and respected, who play sharp- it is very painful for me to listen. JP

Charlie McDonald · From: out of the blue

When you tune straight up, you're out of tune when anything else starts to sound in tune.

Robert Thomas · From: Mehama, Oregon, USA

I have always tuned stright up 440. No problem! I guess the solution for some would be to keep their tuner plugged in at all times and watch it while picking each string to make sure they pick straight up and in tune at all times. Whatever happened to talent and the ability to hear when you weren't holding your bar in the proper position? Most of us probably play out of tune (440) some times. This subject is so worn out, maybe it could be put to rest in the graveyard of down out of tuners, no pun intended.

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