First verse tone on E9th - He Stopped Loving Her Today

[Brian Spratt]

As many of you know, the original recording of "He Stopped Loving Her Today" featured a custom built, pedal string bending, six-string guitar made by MSA. It sounds somewhat like a pedal steel with a phaser, but the notes are too low to achieve on a standard E9th setup. Here's an audio clip I created where I think I nailed the tone pretty well with a standard E9th setup and a pitch shifting effect. Some of you may find this pretty interesting.

https://soundcloud.com/thepedalstop/he- ... shift-tone

[Joe Krumel]

I really like the sound you got.

[Donny Hinson]

I think that as long as you play it in the lowest register you can, no one will really care. I've played that song a thousand different times, and in three or four different keys, and nobody ever exclaimed "that doesn't sound like the original record".

I often played Steel Guitar Rag in "C", instead of "E", and no one (except the occasional chops-limited lead player) even noticed.

[Ron Pruter]

Yes, that was Phil Baugh playing that pedaled guitar. I remember reading about that guitar in Guitar Player magazine. RP

[Kenny Davis]

Peavey 6 string guitar with a MSA mini pedal board with six pedals. He had it at the 1980 ISGA while performing with the "Nashville Super Pickers."

[Bobby D. Jones]

Pete Drake was listed as steel guitar, On "He Stopped Loving Her Today" by George Jones. From what I have found Pete Drake had a MSA S12 Universal as part of his bag of studio tricks.

With 12 Universal tuning, The lower octave 8E-9B-10G#-11E and Delay comes awful close.

When I played with Touch of Country, HSLHT was 1 of Joe Dalton's most requested songs. My GFI Ultra S12 and I got several comments for sounding near the original recording.