Tone bar for playing slide guitar style

Paul Sutherland · Post by **Paul Sutherland** » 9 Feb 2013 4:20 pm

I am increasingly finding musical situations wherein I would like to play slide guitar style (think Duane Allman, and to a less degree David Lindley) on my lap steel (or pedal steel). I can get the overdrive sound via pedals or a high gain amp, but something is still not right when I use a normal steel guitar tone bar. I know that tone bars can really affect tone, and I think I'm getting too much sustain with my Dunlop Jerry Byrd style bar.

Does anyone have experience in these matters? What's a better tone bar for this purpose? Thoughts, opinions?

Joel Bloom · Post by **Joel Bloom** » 9 Feb 2013 4:31 pm

I'd be trying ceramic or glass bars. I sometimes use a thick-walled glass medicine bottle!!
Good luck with it

Wally Moyers · Post by **Wally Moyers** » 9 Feb 2013 9:08 pm

I use a dobro bar when I'm trying to get more of a slide sound.. It sounds a lot different than my pedal steel bar.. I would like to try a glass slide sometime but haven't yet.. This is a link of a song demo (Dangerous) I played my ResoRocker Lap steel/Dobro on using the dodro bar... I played it through a fender deluxe no effects.. https://soundcloud.com/pedalrocker/dangerous

Paul Sutherland · Post by **Paul Sutherland** » 9 Feb 2013 9:47 pm

Hey Wally: Dangerous sounds real good, and the sound you are getting is pretty much exactly what I'm after. If I didn't know better I'd think it was slide guitar on the tune. I'm sure that at least part of the sound is how and what you are playing.

When you say dobro bar, I assume you mean a Stevens bar, or similar. I'd sure rather use a bar with a bullet nose, but I'll have to give my Stevens bar a try.

Joel: I've looked at glass bars on the web but they all seems to talk about how smooth and warm a tone they produce, and how much sustain they have. I want a raspy, sharp tone with very little sustain. Or at least I think that's what I want. Still looking.

Mike Neer · Post by **Mike Neer** » 9 Feb 2013 10:07 pm

There's always the option of using a slide on your finger and actually wearing the steel like a guitar with a strap. I've done that before in a recording session with excellent results.

Joel Bloom · Post by **Joel Bloom** » 9 Feb 2013 11:10 pm

I've seen lap players using thin stainless steel standard guitar slides, putting their pointer finger inside it and holding the rest of it like a lapsteel bar. This may help with a thinner, less sustaining tone??
Also the really old lapsteel 'student bars' or 'comb bars' that are flat are good for this thinner and less sustaining sound i found.

Check out what slide guitarist David Tronzo uses (paper cups, drink bottles etc)- is there a Tronzo of the Lapsteel??

Wally Moyers · Post by **Wally Moyers** » 10 Feb 2013 7:17 am

Hey Paul,

The dobro bar I use has a bullet side and the sharper side.. For slide I use the bullet side.. I'll add a pic of a close up that kind of show it. I'm not sure what the brand is, it's a bar my Dad used with his dobro...

Peter Jacobs · Post by **Peter Jacobs** » 10 Feb 2013 7:44 am

Wally - that sounds like a Shubb SP-2, which is the bar I use. Great tone on "Dangerous"! That's the sound I go for on lap, and the Shubb bar works fine. So does a Lap Dawg.

Jim Pitman · Post by **Jim Pitman** » 10 Feb 2013 9:17 am

I played an entire night with a hollow guitar slide because I left my kit bag at home. Got a lousy clean sound with half as much sustain, but, throw on the distortion and voila, more true to the slide guitar sound whereby the extra gain tends to amplify your attack and subsequent harmonics. I left the amp on stun all night.
Playing over driven with with a slide is a new tool for me when a blues or rock tune calls for a slide sound.

Asa Brosius · Post by **Asa Brosius** » 10 Feb 2013 10:44 am

I'd also say try the real thing-I use a generic (dunlop maybe?) brass 6-string bottleneck slide on lap/psg- a sustain killer, with much more string resistance than a tonebar, that requires more lifting for movement perpendicular to the string, without the bullet end. This also allows for more bottle neck style 'mess'-the badass growly sonic artifacts of the genre, that we generally try to work against with good psg technique towards a smooth legato.

Michael Lee Allen · Post by **Michael Lee Allen** » 10 Feb 2013 11:07 am

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Steve Ahola · Post by **Steve Ahola** » 10 Feb 2013 3:41 pm

I think that the big difference between slide guitar and lap steel is the mechanics of your hand and arm movements (just look at how your hand and arm are positioned.) But I do agree that a dobro-style shaped bar will help.

Check out Al Perkins' playing on "The Last of the Red Hot Burritos"- he switches between his pedal steel, his lap steel and his strat on the various songs on the live recording. Here is Christine's Tune (AKA Devil In Disguise)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4zUylz9B6s

The original album jacket did not mention lap steel so I thought that his solo on that song was on pedal steel. In an email he told me that the solos that sounded like lap steel were played on lap steel.

Although he might be playing that solo with a slide on his strat I am pretty sure that it is lap steel- and very amazing for 1971 (before David Lindley put lap steel on the map for the rock generation.)

Steve Ahola

EDIT I think that the Paloma Stone tone bars work great for bottleneck style lap steel since they are light and the ceramic surface is almost as smooth as glass. As for slide guitarists, I have heard them play with Coricidan bottles, chrome slides, brass slides... you name it; I don't hear that big of difference between any of those for electric guitar- I think that technique and style make a bigger difference (If you are playing acoustically there can be a big difference.)

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 11 Feb 2013 1:45 am

It's all about the weight. Classic, solid metal PSG bars run from 7 - 10 oz, guitar slides very rarely tip over 3 oz. I actually have a number of slides in the "in-between" range, which I mostly prefer. Duane Allman used a Coricidin bottle, which couldn't tip over 1 oz. The weight of the pedal steel guitar itself is a factor - 30 lb. vs. an underarm guitar of 6 to 10 lb. And the PSG pickup is usually way more powerful, 14-20K vs. 5-9K.

Still, it can be done. Mostly finding a good guitar overdrive box, understanding that it may sound most "guitarish" with the PSG volume pedal partially backed off, and it's not going to be useful for anything BUT the slide guitar sound. You can go all the way to having a separate tube setup for those parts, if rock is what you mostly play.

John Billings · Post by **John Billings** » 11 Feb 2013 10:30 am

Airline Rocket, played with an old Stevens bar. You can hear me clearly in the intro and outro, but I played "power"chords throughout the song. Amp Farm. ProTools.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAY1WKouT18

Steve Ahola · Post by **Steve Ahola** » 11 Feb 2013 5:51 pm

John Billings wrote:Airline Rocket, played with an old Stevens bar. You can hear me clearly in the intro and outro, but I played "power"chords throughout the song. Amp Farm. ProTools.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAY1WKouT18

Pretty amazing! So is that Neil Zaza playing the regular electric guitar, or is that you, too?

John Billings · Post by **John Billings** » 12 Feb 2013 6:37 am

That's Neil on 6-string. He's an amazing player. I played pedal steel on another song on that cd. I'm mostly there for "texture."