The first one is an old Magnatone, in mother-of-toiletseat brown. It's my favorite of the lot. These are generally frowned on by Steel players because they have a pretty raw tone. The pickup is more like a stratocaster pickup than a normal steel guitar, which means it not a powerful, but these have a great dynamic range and don't tend to feed back. This one is normally in Open D or Open G.
This one is a picture of a national dynamic- it looks like mine, I can't find a good picture of mine right now. It's a classic National- brand lap steel with the big pickup. This is a guitar on steroids, very powerful and sensitive enough to play 3 octaves up the neck. Normally tuned to Open E, Open E-minor and Open A. Sometimes tuned to an E-tuning that goes 1-5-6-1-3-5
This one is an old Supro Comet, circa 1950-something. It's the one I normally play on the legs when I have a gig where I can't or don't want to sit down. It's strung so I can tune it to basically anything froma low Open-C to an Open-A. Unreal that the strings don't break more....
Ok, this one you may have seen from time to time, it's an odd one- an Eddie Alkyrie 10-string, probably made by Epiphone in the 50's. It's tuned to an E13-type of tuning that I developed for this one. It gives me the intervals I need to play minor and major chords as well as some hip jazz chords with odd extensions.
And, finally, the one that started it all- this is the National New Yorker that my friend Boo Rody loaned me *years* ago to learn on. After all these years Boo gave me the chance to buy it and I jumped at the chance. It belonged to his mother who was a professional guitarist and steel player in the 1930's and 1940's. This is a really powerful sounding old guitar that shreds amps for breakfast- it's the one you hear on 'Heartache and Trouble', for example. This is the big-block Chevy of the bunch.
Oh, it does go to gigs, but only ones where I can keep my hands on it, so it doesn't tend to travel at all. Gotta see a show in Aberdeen to see this one....
