Picture of Al Petty & his 21 pedal Sierra

[Mike Perlowin RIP]

Think about keeping all those ... 20 strings in tune.

That's 24 strings Keith. The guitar is a D-12, with an E9/B6 on the front neck and a tuning Al invented on the back.

The copedants are all listed in the Pedal Steel section.

[Bill Stafford]

We had "lots of fun" building that one for Al. Turned out pretty good though.
Bill Stafford

[Frank Parish]

Around 82-83 a guy came to The Hilton Inn in Jeffersonville,In where I was playing with a trio on drums. I remember walking over to hear the guy play but I couldn't stay long enough to find out who it was. I do remember it was a Sierra guitar with a double row of pedals and it seems like it was a single neck but I could be mistaken. Too long and too short a look to remember just what was what. With all those pedals in double rows I would think that could've been Al Petty.

[Sam Conomo]

i loss count after 3.
what ..pedal???
sam.

[Jim Smith]

I'd still like to know where the D-12 21 pedal Dekley is that I built for him, and see some pictures of it too.

[Bill Hatcher]

from one of the captions under a pic of him...


"Petty sits at the "Guitorchestra," a complicated musical instrument he once hoped would catch on as a replacement for studio musicians. It didn't."

[Wally Moyers]

Al is a really cool guy.. I met him in 1986 when he brought his motor home to Lubbock and demo'ed his synth system to all the steel players in town. I became a dealer and sold a few systems. Al had trouble delivering so he had to refund most of the deposits... I had a system but it wasn't that reliable.. In those days Al reminded me of the professor on back to the
future... Very smart and full of energy.. I worked two Dallas shows with him selling the systems and played his steel quite a bit.. I don't remember that much about the tuning except that it didn't take me long to get were I could play it fairly well... I miss those days, very exciting...

[Dustin Rhodes]

http://www.alpettytrial.com/LifeofAlPetty.html

Wow. Just wow.

[Bob Blair]

I'm with Jim Smith - that Dekley must be an awfully conspicuous guitar. Hard to imagine how it, of all instruments, could drop off the face of the Earth.

[Jim Smith]

I'm with Jim Smith - that Dekley must be an awfully conspicuous guitar. Hard to imagine how it, of all instruments, could drop off the face of the Earth.

He said his "excuse" for not paying us for it was that it got stolen from his church.

[Alan Coldiron]

I worked for Al playing bass in the early 80's. When I first started in July 1980 he was playing a Sho-bud. Then he got the Dekley, then the Sierra. Never knew what happened to the old guitars. I do know we never tore it down. We always laid it down in the back of a van. When he went gospel the steel had its own compartment under the bus. Al also had a bad back so my brother Vern who was the drummer and I always carried it.

[Alan Coldiron]

This is from Scott's 1981.

[Jerry Overstreet]

I saw Al Petty at the St. Louis Convention several times. That one pic with the cowboy hat was about the time he did Devil Went Down to Georgia. Shortly after that show, he became a Christian and changed the lyric in that phrase to, "I told you once you son-of-a-gun".

I took his tuning course there one year and still listen to the tape frequently. It is an educational lesson titled something like "How [and Why] To Tune My Instrument With the Rest of the World". Basically equal tempered scale with some relaxations in places, and using your ears to count beats in or out. Works really well, but you have to be able to hear your instrument, sometimes a problem on a noisy stage.

Anyone know if that course is still available? If so, I would encourage everyone to at least listen to it. It would so help your understanding of intervals and how the harmonic beat is created within the fundamentals of other notes as well as how to deal with them.

Mike P., or any of you older guys remember or have this course? I think it was in the mid 80', early 90's sometime when I got it in St. Louis.

I think Al has an incredible mind and was very innovative in his approach to music. It's a terrible tragedy that his gift was stifled by legal problems.

[Louie Hallford]

My opportunity to own a Guitarorchestra:

An elderly gentleman, who lives here in the town where I live, passed away 5 or 6 years ago had one of Al,s insturments. His efforts to demo it for me always failed,somewhat the same problem Al had everytime I saw him set up in St Louis or Dallas.

If Al had a thirty minute set,you could bet that 20 minutes would be needed to de bug before he ever played his first song. His was always a good set for going to take a crap because you knew you weren't going to miss any thing.

In all fairness, once he got it going I found it quite fasinating.

When the old gentleman died his wife called me and another steel player to go through his things and have first shot at buying what we wanted.

I had a chance to buy his guitar (Blue Sierra) and the orchestra for $600 .Reese Anderson scolded me for not buying it and told me the midi pick ups were worth more than that.

PS : prior to the old man's death I visited he and his wife and ask them if they knew of Al's imprisonment. They told me no,the spouse continued,I wish he had payed us back all the money he borrowed from us before he went to jail. According to them Al would ask to borrow mone to pay his utilities etc. Sadley the old man had been on disability for several years the wife was the sole support except for the husbands SS check as well as they were raising a 8 or 9 year old grandson. Possibly was during the time all AL's assets were tied up???

By the way I have a small keyboard and effect box of some kind that was connected to the setup. Don't have a clue what it does?????