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Herb's Steel Guitar Pages
Texas Steel Guitar Association

Mark, no photo shop...nothing enhanced, just natural

Terry,...this is not a production guitar. It's modified, but it wasn't a standard guitar to begin with. This guitar was a "by product" of another project and this just kind of just "fell into my lap." I have it tuned to C6/A7.

Jeff, speaking of sound chambers, I'll begin the story. Yeah, there's always a story...

First some background.....In the 70s, I was very much into bluegrass and was a big fan of the progressing young players, specifically Jerry Douglas, David Grisman, Bela Fleck, and Tony Rice. When David Grisman came out with "Quintet" and debuted his "Dawg" music, I immediately liked it. In the early 80s when he toured with Stephan Grappelly, I had the opportunity to see them on two ocassions. That's when I discovered Django Reinhardt and Gypsy Jazz.

Over the last 8 months, my interest in this music has been renewed and I've been listening to the next generation of Gypsy jazz artists who are expanding the music in many innovative ways. Because I'm a David Grisman fan, I lurk about the Mandolin Cafe where there is a forum devoted to swing, jazz, blues, and choro.

Last spring I was working with Carroll Benoit on my unusual 7 string resonator, The Phoenix, based on the D'Angelico teardrop...
http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum2/HTML/003139.html

I was attempting to research the external sound chamber employed by 8 string classical guitar genius Paul Gailbraith, and was having some difficulty in trying to obtain this information. At the time, there was a lot of excitement at the Mandolin Cafe as John David Hodson, a British luthier who builds Selmer style guitars, was also building Selmer style mandolins. I decided to contact him to see if he could provide any information on an external soundbox.

We emailed back and forth, and in our conversations, David mentioned that he had built a 7 string guitar for someone who never completed the transaction. The guitar was built to the specs given. The neck was unusual, very thin and squarish with standard action. David had this guitar for sometime as there was no market or anyone interested in it. Aside from the rarity of a 7 string acoustic player, the neck was kind of a slide set up. David asked if I would be interested in giving it a home abroad. I said that I would, if he would put a real Hawaiian neck on it for me. I sent him photos and measurements and there you have it, a "Selmaloha" by a twist of fate.

Recently I was in my elevator with a guitar case and a neighbor asked if I were a musician by trade. My reply was, "No, I'm a musician by default"......

Here's the link to Hodson Guitars....
http://212.67.202.53/~simonmayor/mandolin.htm

scroll down and click on Hodson

[This message was edited by HowardR on 02 March 2003 at 08:32 AM.]

Was with our friends , the Benoits last nite. They are excited about the Dallas Show.

Have a ball

I looove "Hot Club" music! ...With that boom-chit boom-chit rhythm so strong that a drummer wasn't needed! There's a short video clip of Django here:
http://www.lobsterfilms.com/lobster/html/loaz04.htm

The music is especially interesting to me because it was popular around the time when many of the Hawaiian songs we play today were written and recorded. One can totally hear the influences. It was the "Reggae" of Pua Almeida, Sonny Kamahele, and Alvin Isaacs' day!

...Which only goes to show that my vehement contempt for today's Rock N Roll and Reggae influences in Hawaiian music is just uninformed idiocy.

[This message was edited by Jeff Au Hoy on 02 March 2003 at 08:47 AM.]

As discussed in a previous thread, short of being Jerry Douglas, many aspects of Gypsy jazz may be near impossible on dobro or non pedal steel. I always thought that the techniques employed by the Hawaiian masters, such as Sol Hoopi could "pull it off", pardon the pun. Stacy Phillips does "Flambee Montalanaise" on Legends of the Incredible Lap Steel cd. This is a prime example of fantastic manual dexterity.

To answer a couple of questions.....

with regard to how the guitar sounds....I have a bit of tweaking to do before a final judgement. I have it tuned to C6/A7, with gauges that I use on the Phoenix, that are heavier than normal for this tuning. Strings 4 - 8 have punch to them and sound good, but the first 3 seem heavy and sound too muted. They work well on a resonator but not this. I'll have to string 1 - 3 lighter. Right now, the nut is a thick corian. I have a thinner bone nut that I want to install and compare.

The next factor is, what do I compare this too? I don't and never have played standard guitar, and am so used to resonators, both wood and metal. I've never played a Weissonborn type, and that's still a different animal. I suppose I'll finish my tweaking and make my own determination.

Do any of you think that the steel guitar virtuosi of the 1920's and 30's succeeded in taking the steel guitar to the level that Django took his instrument? I suppose the lines that Sol Ho'opi'i played were (arguably) not as harmonically or melodically (even more arguable) "complex" as Django's. But maybe that's not the most ideal basis for comparison. Maybe sheer skill should be the measure. Would you say what Sol Ho'opi'i did was as difficult as what Django was doing?

[This message was edited by Jeff Au Hoy on 04 March 2003 at 11:25 AM.]

Basically, in my opinion, there are only a handful of 20th century improvising musicians who are in Django's league. He married almost uncanny technical ability with transcendently, beautiful melodicism. As good as Sol was, he's not in Django's circle artisitically.

That said, what Sol achieved in steel guitar technique is perhaps more difficult than what Django achieved because it is accessible to far fewer musicians who followed. I don't feel that the bar for steel technique has been raised significantly beyond what Sol achieved. There are musicans today who can perhaps match Django's dexterity but nobody who can match his artistry - and pour it all out spontaneously at incredible speed as he did.

Both Django & Sol took exisiting traditions and synthesized something new.

Sol took tradtitional Hawaiian music and medled it to the hot jazz and blues he heard in LA in the 20's. And later, he fused Hawaiian music with church music (something that had been going on for 70 years).

Django fused the Gypsy tradition and the French Musette with the hot American jazz
he heard from Armstrong, Venuti & Lang and others. So both deserve credit for being pioneers who were hugely influential on other musicians.

[This message was edited by Andy Volk on 04 March 2003 at 12:20 PM.]