There are numerous guitar players here that could benefit from info sharing. Also the added incentive would be that other guitar players would come to the Forum as a result of the guitar section and have access to info about the steel guitar. There are a lot of underarm guitar players out there who dabble at the steel and others who might become interested after being here and seeing what great info there is here on the instrument.

There is also a Computer section and an Electronics section.

[This message was edited by Bill Hatcher on 17 November 2006 at 08:06 AM.]

All you need is a very hands on, no jive allowed moderator. A cross between Mother Theresa and Hannibal Lector. That would keep everything civil and weed out the rift raft.

The $5 cover charge would be enough to ward off most trouble makers.

[This message was edited by Bill Hatcher on 17 November 2006 at 08:35 AM.]

I have a lot of interests in life (I also play standard guitar), but if I want to read or ask questions about firearms, fishing, aviation or stamp-collecting, I'll go and look for like-minded people interested in those things; one of the great attractions for me about The Steel Guitar Forum is it's uniqueness.

You know when I log on the forum I have to make a concerted effort to click on the links to the sections I am interested in. There are sections that I have never even looked at. If you are not interested in a section then you would never need to read anything on it.

That would be the "Great Wal of China Mart".

[This message was edited by Bill Hatcher on 17 November 2006 at 08:54 AM.]

I certainly don't see how this would dilute this forum in any way. It simply makes a bigger tent, and gives a formal place for dual steel-guitar/regular-guitar players to discuss ideas of mutual interest not to mention open up to a wider slide/bottleneck community. IMO, that's important because it's pretty clear now that many of us have feet in both areas, but still prefer this forum to be our primary online musical association.

[This message was edited by Dave Mudgett on 17 November 2006 at 09:52 AM.]

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Bobby Lee
-b0b- quasar@b0b.com
System Administrator
My Blog

quote:

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... to give just one example, many of us are looking for an amp that can handle both because we swap instruments between numbers on the bandstand.

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Regular guitarist outnumber us 10,000 to one. We would disappear into the crowd and the forum would be destroyed.

"If It Ain't Broke,Dont Fix It."

Bobby

[This message was edited by Bobby Johnson on 20 November 2006 at 03:54 AM.]

[This message was edited by Richard Sevigny on 23 November 2006 at 06:05 PM.]

But I doubt that this would "dilute or destroy the forum" or cause us to be "overrun with clueless headbanging guitar punks" or other such alarmist predictions. I have a hard time picturing why a guitar player not also interested in steel guitar would be here. I think the kind of yahoos who anonymously spew garbage on these so-called "guitar forums" would be very intimidated by having to publically use their real names, and have oversight from intelligent moderators who could toss them off in a heartbeat.

Although I disagree with the assertion that all of us are (serious) guitar players, many of us are, and this is our chosen online home. Why go to a guitar-specific forum when the people who discuss the relevant stuff for us are here? I also don't see what cars, banjos, guns, bagpipes, or any of these other red herrings have to do with it. A steel guitar is a type of guitar, and many of us are deeply into both - that is the relevance.

I know I'm treading on sensitive ground to state any relationship between non-pedal steel guitar and slide guitar, but I think there is a significant one. But right now, any type of "slide guitar" seems, to me, to be treated as, at best, a bastard child of the steel guitar family. To me, that was the most important part of my argument for a "regular guitar" section - in fact, I'd call it "Slide and Regular Guitar". I especially don't see how we could lose by bringing in some good slide players, with whom we have much in common. I think many of you underestimate how many slide and guitar players could - with some encouragement - get interested in making the jump to steel guitar.