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Bobbe's Tips from Bobbe Seymour at SteelGuitar.net
2009-10-15
Hello fellow players,
Many of you players are asking about the Alumatone pickup and wondering how it affects the tone of your steel guitar in actual playing applications.
One thing I have noticed is they seem to put out a wider range of frequencies. Like the difference in an old wind up Victrola and a new hi-fidelity stereo.
This naturally is an exaggeration, however that’s the type of difference it is. Many of the older pickups being made in the business today, you’ll notice the notes of a chord sort of running together. With these Alumatone pickups you will notice a nice separation and every note seems to be ringing in its own world.
Even the lower notes that run together have great separation. The highest notes that you will be playing will be ringing true and clear and you don’t have to leave certain notes out to make sure that your melody note in a chord is predominant.
Hope this answers the questions that many of you have asked. One more thing that is obvious about these pickups. They are without a doubt, the most beautiful pickups that have ever been put on a steel guitar. The ones we sell are all chrome. This beauty factor alone is well worth the price of the pickup.
Talk about things changing as the years go by, I was remembering how I felt as a young player when I first came to Nashville. I tried to make every jam session that I could ever hear of in town. Believe me, there were many of them going on. Somebody would call my house and say, “Day and Emmons are jamming at the Wheel and Brumley is supposed to be there in an hour.”
You could almost feel the wind burn when I left the house so fast with my steel in one hand and an amp in the other. I was always looking for a chance to play, always looking for work and when I got an occasional session, I wouldn’t have to write it down, I’d be counting the minutes, hours, days and weeks until it came about.
I was working the road with several Opry acts at this time. It seemed that there was always work in town between road dates when I was working with Connie Smith, Claude Gray, Stonewall Jackson or Ferlin Husky.
In the fall of the first year, I was working with Ray Price, but by this time I was awfully glad to have time to stay in Nashville. I finally realized that I could make more money by accident by staying in town than I could make with any road job that I had had.
This was confirmed one day when fellow Nashville steel guitarist Stu Basore said to me over lunch, pecan pie and coffee I believe, “Why are you working the road? You’re doing a few sessions, all the club work you want and I can give you about two or three TV shows a week regardless of how little they pay.”
So I agreed and realized that it was a lot more fun to stay in Nashville than work the road and I felt like I was actually building something by staying in town, meeting everyone and seeing everyone almost every day. It was was a lot more fun than bumping down the road in a bus and having to put up with the same egomaniac star seven days a week.
Of course, they weren’t all egomaniacs, but mostly maniacs in one way or another. I usually ended up being good friends with a couple crazy guys and a couple crazy girls.
After a couple years in town, I spent most of my time looking for other steel players to work jobs I couldn’t cover.
Now let’s pole vault up to this day and time. It seems like sessions just aren’t there like they used to be. Yesteryear, I could just walk down Broadway and I’d see a songwriter on the street that would want me to do a demo for them at some close by studio within an hour or two.
I was eating at a little restaurant on music row and Porter Wagoner came in with Dolly. I stood up and introduced myself as a steel player. He said, “Great. I have a session I need a steel on. This is the writer, Dolly Parton.”
I think Dolly was about 25 then, possibly younger and I was still in my twenties. I looked at Porter and said, “How much am I going to have to pay you for this session?” Every time Dolly saw me backstage at the Opry after that, she’d run up to me and give me a kiss and say “You can work for me anytime you want to and it won’t cost you nothin’!”
As I’m trying to say here, I imagine things are a whole lot different today since I don’t have to walk Broadway looking for work and I laugh at the thought of doing a jam session. I just recently got hired for some sessions but managed to forget where they were and what time they were and forgot one completely.
This was a wake-up call for me letting me know that I really don’t have any interest in doing recording sessions, regardless of money and I feel the same about road dates. So maybe it isn’t just the world changing around me, but me changing myself.
Do I still love steel guitar? You bet! I love the sound, the tone, hearing them bark in the hands of a highly skilled player. I love the way a steel guitar smells when you open the case. I love feeling the heat on a big old tube amp. I love hearing a transistor amp pop when I first turn it on. Do I love steel guitar? I love designing them, building them, repairing them and playing them.
But if I could eat birdseye maple for breakfast and lunch I would. That’s all for today. I can’t eat the wood, but I will have some maple syrup on my pancakes.
If you are as crazy about beautiful steel guitars and any kind of music as I am, I sure don’t mind hearing from you by email. I can’t answer all of them, but I do read them all.
See our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html
Your buddy,
Bobbe
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