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mstuartev - Posted - 06/25/2014: 12:21:12
Greetings!
New to the forum and new to Weissenborn... and loving it! Got a nice Lazy River spruce/walnut Weissenborn that came with a Jerry Douglas special bar. Works nice but I am curious about trying a bullet bar as well and have heard awesome things about Tribotone. Now I hear that it may be a done deal. An email to them has gone unanswered. They are sought after but if anyone has one they are interested in dealing out to a worthy and appreciative home (especially if it is a 'B' bar - appropriate for 6 string Weiss) do let me know.
Or if you can recommend or offer a similar bullet bar that would work on a Weiss.
Thanks!
Mark E in Madison WI
MarkinSonoma - Posted - 06/25/2014: 13:44:41
Tribotone seems to have gone missing. There have been posts on the Steel Guitar Forum where players haven't had any luck tracking down the owner.
If you want to go the bullet bar route you might want try something smaller and lighter than a pedal steel bar for weissie and/or dobro. On acoustic lap steels one is using more "hand expression" as it were when handling the bar, and a full-sized heavy pedal steel bar is for me anyway, too cumbersome for the job.
When I play electric lap steel I typically go with a Scheerhorn "sculpted' dobro bar because I play a lot more dobro than lap. But for a long time I used on lap steel a smaller, lighter bullet bar, known as the Jerry Byrd bar. As a kid (a long time ago) I used smaller Nick Manaloff Bakelite-coated bars.
Dunlop makes a stainless Jerry Byrd bar for about $19 retail, so it doesn't break the bank if you want to see how it feels, and they are pretty decent bars for the money. You can get the smaller Jerry Byrd style bullet bar from BJS, and these babies are the Cadillac, but we're talking seventy bucks. Butch Gardner took over ownership of BJS in 2011. It will show on the website as "out of stock" but Butch recently posted on the SGF that due to family health issues he has not been able to spend the time recently updating the site and that one should call him first, the items in question could be available. He might also give you feedback on what others might be ordering for weissenborn playing. Butch produces quite an array of tone bars.
I'm curious about the "Jerry Douglas special bar." I've never heard of a bar associated with Jerry's name in the title, unless it is something like a Tipton or Beard bar that he has been known to use, but not an actual endorser of that bar and somehow it was informally given that moniker.
Also Mark E, but in Sonoma County, CA
Link to BJS:
bjsbars.com/steel-guitar-bars.php
Link to Tom Bradshaw's site which has a better spiel about the Dunlop Jerry Byrd bar than does the actual Dunlop website:
songwriter.com/bradshaw/tone_bars.php
Edited by - MarkinSonoma on 06/25/2014 13:54:10
mstuartev - Posted - 06/25/2014: 16:07:49
Mark:
Thanks for all the info! When I get home I'll check the bar, but I'm pretty sure it actually has Jerry Douglas' signature on the end. As I said, it is what came with the weiss. It's the one that the previous owner settled on that he liked the most with the weissenborn. I will check out that Dunlop Jerry Byrd. The prices is right. $70 bucks seems like a lot for a bar (tho the Tribotone devotees seemed to think it is worth it.) The seller of the Weiss told me the Jerry Douglas was about $80.
mstuartev - Posted - 06/26/2014: 15:36:07
It appears as tho the 'Jerry Douglass' special (it has his name in script on it) is made by Beard (by the double wave logo... similar, I guess, to a 2010S(?) ANyway, I think I will get a Jerry Bird Dunlop bullet bar (918) at Guitar Center as they seem to carry them.
MarkinSonoma - Posted - 06/26/2014: 17:45:09
Is it spelled with a double "s" as in Douglass, vs . how he spells it which is Douglas, or is that just a typo? Because if it is a "ss" then somebody must have been fooling around with that bar. Paul Beard wouldn't spell Jerry's last name incorrectly, he's probably written out too many checks to him!
mstuartev - Posted - 06/27/2014: 07:12:39
My bad. Typo. Spelled with one 's.' It's in script on the side. Most of my info comes directly from the seller of the Weissenborn. thanks for your assistance.
