Hello fellow players,

While watching the science network on cable last week, I saw an experiment where a machine was totally controlled by the thought process from a human being.  I am sure many of you have seen the way brainwaves that are picked up by a special hat with sensors located around it, can be amplified to flip microscopic relays that can be used to pass currents of electricity to different servos which makes this strange process happen.

How long do you think it will be before you can put one of these hats on with the sensors and plug it into your stack of Marshalls and think about the intro to Crazy Arms and as you�re humming it to yourself, everybody can hear it coming out of the amp.

Does this sound silly to you?  What if I had written to you about computers twenty years ago where you can send a picture and a message to anybody in the world free.  You�d have called me the nut that you�re probably calling me now for thinking about the thought process guitar.

This wouldn�t be like a player piano which is a mechanical contrivance, but the slurs, slides, tones and counterpoint can be created as you think it.  I must tell you that this whole idea isn�t mine, but was touched on in a conversation that I had with Buddy Emmons eighteen years ago.  

It�s just that every time I turn on television, it seems like we are getting closer and closer to a thought process steel guitar being a working reality.  Pedal setups are a thing of the past with this method, as are possibly even the guitars themselves.

Of course, you would still have to be a steel guitar player to know what we�re thinking about.  Think about all this the next time you see the military channel and see an airplane being flown by using this thought process and sensors in a helmet.  We may be closer than we think.

It may not be a bad thing if we can control what we�re thinking.  Your minds can go wild thinking about this kind of thing, but it�s close.  Of course, at the moment, I�d just as soon fly my airplane with my hands and play my guitar with my fingers which I think I can control better than my thoughts.  After all, I�d hate to be in the middle of a solo on Rocky Top in the middle of a show and have a beautiful, sexy young girl come up to the stage in a mini-skirt and � well, you get the idea.

A different subject now about the finishes on the bottom of steel guitars.  In the beginning, Emmons steel guitars had a red felt process applied to the bottom.  Before the cabinet was assembled and after the mica was pressed on, the bottom of the guitar was covered with a sticky red or clear paint, then a hand full of tiny felt threaded were dumped into the bottom or hand sprayed into the bottom which stuck to the paint.

When the paint dried, there it was.  A permanent fuzzy bottom on the guitar.  It looked great, covered up flaws in the wood and any extra holes that may have had to be drilled.  Not much later when Emmons started making the first brown rosewood mica guitars, they used a brown felt on the bottom.  This was mid to late sixties.  

Then of course, the black felt came into being which goes through until today.  Many of you have said this might have something to do with that fabulous Emmons tone.  After doing some serious experimenting, I can assure you it doesn�t.  But it does have a lot to do with how nice the guitar looks.  And no, the black felt doesn�t sound better.

On the early Sho-Bud guitars, after the permanent cross shafts and welded bell cranks were screwed to the guitar, black spray can, probably rustoleum, painted everything under the guitar. the wood, the steel parts and the aluminum l-brackets that hold the cross shaft.

Most of the spray painted black guitars underneath we built by David Jackson in the early sixties.  A very few that weren�t painted, just the natural dirty maple, were probably built by Shot Jackson himself in the famous chicken coup of Jack Anglin of Johnny and Jack fame.

Shot was actually playing steel guitar for them in this period.  When Jack was killed in the car wreck coming back from Patsy Cline�s funeral, Shot moved the business to the corrugated metal building with dirt floor by the railroad track on Nesbitt Lane in Madison, Tennessee.

This was very early sixties and Shot said to his son David, �Help.  You take care of this production stuff and I�ll piddle around in my garage at home and try to keep these stars happy.�

Anyway, using the finish on the bottom of the guitar as a dating process can be pretty accurate if you know what you�re looking at for Sho-Bud or Emmons guitars.  

I hope to see all of you in Branson for the big steel guitar show there the weekend of the 26th of July.  Then August 7th, I�ll be in Thomasville, North Carolina.  On the Branson show, we�ll be at the Branson mall.

In keeping my promise to keep my mailing list first informed about special guitars we have in stock, I need to tell you about a brand new Rittenberry that was just delivered.  This one has a natural lacquer birdseye maple sunburst front, birdseye mica top, aluminum highly polished neck, three pedals, five knee levers.  It sounds astounding as you may well expect.  

This guitar with this front and polishing package retails for over $2700.  Say you saw it here and we can let you have it for our very low Rittenberry sale price of $2490.  And remember, we have two brand new Rittenberrys in stock right now, both S-10s with 3 and 5.

See our monthly specials at www.steelguitar.net/monthlyspecials.html 

Your buddy,
Bobbe
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
www.youtube.com/bobbeseymour
www.myspace.com/bobbeseymour

Steel Guitar Nashville
123 Mid Town Court
Hendersonville, TN. 37075
(615) 822-5555
Open 9AM � 4PM Monday � Friday
Closed Saturday and Sunday

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