This is where a lot of people err. They do it mechanically and it don’t come out good. The best thing I could do is refer you to my video where I get into this pretty heavily and demonstrate how they should do it.
To answer Don McClellan’s problem where he can’t seem to get very good tone out of a 3 string slant (chord) such as playing string 5 at the 7th fret and strings 2 and 3 or 3 and 4 at the 8th fret and so on. This is what I call split string. I discovered this years and years ago. If you play the top three strings and you slant that one fret, top string stays one fret lower than the third string, the second string can be played if you know how to do it. What I discovered years ago was that I had to have a bar about ¾” in diameter (just about) and a gently rounded nose not a pointed nose and with the string spacing 3/8.” You can put the bar between those strings and it will make contact on either side of the bar right about where the tapering of the nose starts on the shaft. and it will go right between them and you can play three strings. Two on the 7th fret split and the 3rd string on the 6th fret and in different tunings you have different chords but in the Emajor tuning it would be the most logical to figure out. You goe from a major to a minor chord (those three strings). I have been doing that for years. I have been playing diminished, augmenteds, 9th chords, 7th chords, a lot of stuff – different inversions of those chords all of that by splitting the string but you can’t do it with any kind of a bar and any kind of a guitar. The string spacing has to be right for the size of the bullet nosed bar as it has to make contact on both sides equally. The only one that would come out a little less than normal would be the top string. So what I do to compensate for that is kind of push the bar a little bit rather than leave it in a normal position where it makes better contact with the top string but when played in sequence you don’t hear it anyway. I have been playing stuff that way and people could not figure out what I was playing for years. I have been recording this stuff for years and they are now just catching on or figuring out what I was doing and why.

To those avoiding three string slants I guess that is one way around but it is so simple and right under your nose there is no need to avoid them. I call this the split string technique and it is vital to my playing.

Stevens Bar – The Stevens bar is an absolute piece of junk. The dobro players use them because a dobro player can get away with murder, it doesn’t make any difference what they play with. Players who use them lay their index finger on the trough on top of the bar and all that does is immediately put your hand in a position that if you want to make a quick slant you have got to turn your whole hand and that finger and by then it’s too late and you can’t do it fast enough and you can’t do it accurately. I have had students come to me with these Stevens Bars and I tell them to take the bar to a machine shop and drill a hole about half an inch from either end and use it for a fishing sinker out here in the ocean because it ain’t worth a d--- to play steel guitar with as far as I am concerned. Anyone using one should get rid of it because there is too much you can’t do with it and nothing you can do with it.

The Chubb-Pearse bar is much the same. They are trying to make a Stevens bar into a bullet nose but the trough and finger laying in it is still the problem. You do not lay that finger on top of the bar, it immobilizes the whole operation going into slants. I explain that in my video very plain and demonstrate it also. You don’t hold the bar anyway. What you do is – the bar is laying on the strings and you caress your hand around it. You just cover it up and you DON”T hold it as such – you just move it around and guide it with your fingers. The only time you would hold it is when you pick it up off of the strings which not advisable if your playing not over a half inch off of the strings anyway but if you have your hand down you can do that without any problem – Stevens Bar NO!

I have never changed my bar construction. It is still the same that it’s always been. It is slightly larger in diameter that a dime – just a little larger around than the edge of a dime and that would be the circumference of my bar and 2 and 5/8” to 2 and ¾” long is all you need. Anything longer you are carrying excess length you’re not going to be needing. And if it is too long you can’t get your thumb in the indentation on the rear to do reverse slants. I have tried everything invented and ever heard of, and things I thought of myself until I found what worked and I did that a long long time ago and I’ve never changed.

Folks....Print this..Print it now..I have already.....and this is very giving of Jerry Byrd to jot this down for us.

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Ricky Davis

My Homepage
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[This message was edited by Ricky Davis on 23 December 2001 at 10:49 PM.]