In honor of lowell george.......

[piebaldpython***]

I have to change my password every month at work.....have to use a combo of Upper/lower case letters plus numerics......it's a pain in the butt.....however, I was listening to some Little Feat and decided to honor the late, great Lowell George.

So, part of this month's password will be FATMAN.......per his great slide tune "Fatman In the Bathtub".

Anyone else their honor their music heroes in Passwords????

[Zip]

No, but I met Lowell when I was a kid...Feat were playing a club called Grandmother's next to MSU (since torn down) and after soundcheck he was at the bar drinking Cognac and we chatted for a few minutes. Nice guy. He showed me the Craftsman socket he used for slide. Anyway, sorry to hijack your Pa55w0rd thread

[mrmudcat]

Pie of course I have never heard of the tune or the artist!!.........................

[kidsmoke*]

Well, he's definitely my musical hero, but never used him in passwords.
Typically use some combo of family names and birthdays. Fortunately I've got a small crowd to draw from.

On the socket front. Had an interesting exchange with a professional slide player here in Chicago, who is a LG disciple. Made a comment that Trucks has a thin, whimpy sound. Thinks he's technically stellar, but just doesn't think he has enough heft.

Trucks plays a glass slide on an SG into a PRS amp
George played a socket on a Strat into a dumble

I took classes with this guy, and use a socket for my very rare experiments with slide (my new Larrivée seems perfect for it btw).

So for you steel / slide guys....how much of an effect does the slide have? I know lap steel players use a very heavy steel bar, right?

in honor of LG, how bout some o' this? dude had chops AND pipes.

[piebaldpython***]

Oh boy.....a couple of things. As to DT...re his "heft" or lack thereof....is a function of what DT is playing. He does a lot of jazz-influenced, Indian-influenced stuff where he picks 1 note and then slides to 4 or 5 others. Tell your friend to listen to any of the hard-edged ABB stuff DT plays and he has "heft" galore combined with a ferocious picking attack.

Anyway......as to your question about slides....the material does make a difference. In a very general sense...metal (steel) is the "hardest/bluntest" sound....brass a smidge less so.....glass or lead-crystal is the "warmest/softest" and ceramic/stoneware tends more towards glass than metal in tone. Keep in mind, this is just for if ONE person, using the exact same picking/sliding motion used each of the slides in exactly the same way. Needless to say.....strings and pups can make a difference too.

Lots of heroes to pick from depending on material:
Steel (LG, Johnny Winter, Billy Gibbons, Joe Walsh and Rory Block come immediately to mind...Rory uses Craftsman Sockets too)
Glass (DT, Duane, Bonnie Raitt, Sonny Landreth, Ry Cooder)
Brass (Leo Kottke and Eric Sardinas)....not sure but Eric may use copper piping??
Ceramic/stoneware (Joe Perry)

As to lap steelers........yes, steel is commonly used but not exclusively. The BIG argument with steelers is....do you use a traditional Dobro-style Stevens bar (David Lindley) or a metal tone-bar (Robert Randolph)? lol In a general sense.....the Stevens Dobro-style bar is used if you do a lot of hammer ons/pull-offs....the round tone bar for more mass and just leaving the bar on the strings and utilizing more pick or palm blocking.

As for myself.....whether playing slide or lap steel.....I prefer my slides/tone bars made by Paloma Stone Slides (stoneware) and Tribotones (space-age polymer plastic). I do have some excellent metal tone-bars (solid steel made by Jim Burden)......a few lead-crystal slides and tone bars from Diamond Bottlenecks.

Just a note that the Tribotones slides/tone bars have less "string noise/chatter" than any other slide/bar. This isn't just my belief but the belief of many top-flight sliders/steelers. Especially if playing in the upper registers on the bass strings.

As the great Lap steeler, Jerry Byrd once said (I paraphrase Jerry here).....if you can play well, you can play well on most anything.....and if you can't play worth a lick, it doesn't matter what you play on, it'll still sound lousy.

[mrmudcat]

GLASS!!!!!!!!

[duhvoodooman***]

A little more Feat....with a couple of pretty ladies helpin' out Lowell & the boys:

[kidsmoke*]

warms my heart.

Bonnie and Lowell had it goin' on at the time. Coulda been an earlier version of Tedeschi - Trucks. Ahh well. the 70's took no prisoners.

[piebaldpython***]

Time for a new password----so in honor of Duane Allman-----I'll use his nickname----SKYDOG.