I have a trade option for a GFI Expo from a great forum member.
Is it a good pedal to start on?
Right now I'm playing(not so well mind you, haha) a : Gibson EH-185, 8 string Marrs RGS Cat Can a Silver Hawaiian, and a Gold Tone squareneck beard resonator.
Looking to try out pedal steel, maybe have a little more fun? Or a bit more frustration? haha
The Expo sounds and plays as good as the top line Ultra.
I had an Expo S-10 and it was traded for what I have now a D-10 Ultra. I can't tell any difference in playability or sound between the two.
The biggest change I had going from lap to pedal was bar handling. On lap most will lift the bar and move it to wherever they want. With pedal steel I was taught to mute the strings with the right hand and slide the bar to the new position (if you don't want the slide sound).
String spacing is closer on a Pedal steel and something else to get used to. There are still a couple bar slants but mostly the pedals/knees do the job. Bar slants are a little harder because of the closer string spacing.
An Expo would be a great guitar to start on, especially if you can get a nice trade deal!
GFI is by far the leading steel guitar manufacturer in terms of sales, and has been for many years. They quietly go about their business of building lots of fine guitars with little self promotion. I'll brag on them some, and here is a little information on the company just in case you don't know.
The late Gene Fields (the GF in GFI) was a very talented designer having worked at Fender for a number of years and helping to design some of their electric guitars. He developed the very futuristic Fender PS210 pedal steel which had several forward thinking features.
I was fortunate to get acquainted with him a bit before his passing and have visited his shop a couple of times. The last time I went there I counted nearly 100 guitar bodies on the shelf. They manufacture a good deal of their guitar parts on site.
When Gene started his company it would have been easy for him to simply clone existing designs as many others have done, but that was not his way. He was a true builder. He started with a clean sheet of paper and lots of good ideas. His designs were done with consideration to function, reliability, practicality and efficiency of manufacture.
Gene's son in law Bob continues to do a fine job of running the business and is a very good person in his own right.
I have a GFI Expo SD10 and I love it. It is light, solid, stays in tune, and has a responsive pickup that can be EQ'd in a full-warm tone or a bright-crisp tone or anything in between. It is a 3x4 setup, and the only thing I may think to add is a left-knee vertical lever so it has the same setup as the Zum Encore S10 that I recently purchased (hat's off to Doug Earnest for giving a classy testimonial for another company's product!). The GFI and the Zum are great instruments. I must have been a saint in a previous life to be blessed with such amazing instruments in this life.
Last edited by Anthony Parish on 11 Nov 2020 1:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Ryan Lunenfeld wrote:Thank you! I believe it's a 3+4... 3 means 3 pedal, 4 knee, no?
Yes, you got it.
The GFI will serve you well.
Thank you! I hope so. I'm curious bout the learning curve vs playing a lap steel going to pedal.
I gave pedal steel a try last year after playing lap steel a bit. I'm also trying to do way too much with regular guitar and have myself spread pretty thin. That said with dedicated practice I made progress on pedal steel and could make some pedal steel sounds.
I found it to be a lot of fun. After a while it was like either dig in and make that the whole thing or give it up and get back to all the other stuff I was working on. It does seem to take all your attention in every way. But it's the coolest.
I sold my steel for what I paid for it (shipping it was a bitch). I have no regrets about it, I wanted to try it for years.
I went back to armpit guitar. Lately I'm playing a bit of lap steel and I can work that into my routine quite a bit better and I like that it's cheap and portable.
Only advice is that I got an extended E9 and was also thinking of a universal and in retrospect 10 strings would have been plenty. Less complicated and cheaper. And a single neck E9 makes sense in the beginning to me. Instead of getting a guitar that could do everything imaginable, get something simple, rock solid and figure out the basic moves. You'll probably want something different from whatever you get regardless in a year or two. I don't think you need a ton of extra pedals and levers.
Advice from a failed steel player, take it for what it's worth.
Beg to differ. I think those Justice guitars are beautiful, and reputed to be fine guitars.
Owned a couple GFIs. Play well, sound good, fabulous factory support. Not my favorite look, for what little that matters. Really nice keyless tuning system available, but I don’t think on the Expo.
IIRC Gene called me around early 1969. Red Rhodes told him I had a Sho~Bud Crossover, and he asked if I could come down to Fullerton so that Fender's lawyers could examine the S~B. The lawyers wanted to see if the about-to-be-released PS210 violated any of S-B's patents regarding neck switching. Turned out the 210 didn't, so Fender began making some 210s.
As a relative steel newbie in '69 I was baffled by the 210 undercarriage and frame. To those amongst us who haven't looked at one, it's like no other mechanism you've ever seen. I asked Gene how he came up with that design and he said "a whole lot of laying in bed in the dark and staring up at the ceiling."
Fender was his daytime gig. He also played in bands at night, like Blackie Taylor. Since I grew up in LA, it was a treat to hang in the GFI room at steel shows and listen to those two talk about the SoCal scene back in their day, a full generation before mine. Great memories.
My rig: Infinity and Telonics.
Son, we live in a world with walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with steel guitars. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg?
Don't think I'm going way out on a limb here in saying an overwhelming majority of the guys on this Forum could only wish to have gotten started on a GFI Expo. My first PSG was a Red Baron, and it only took a couple weeks of lessons from a seasoned player to realize it wasn't gonna cut it.
Sounds like Ryan's deal fell through, but I'll still endorse the Expo as a great beginner's guitar (my grandson has one) that could last you indefinitely.
Make sleeping dogs tell the truth!
Homebuilt keyless U12 7x5, Excel keyless U12 8x8, Williams keyless U12 7x8, Telonics rack and 15" cabs
