The British Steelies Society

Just seen this on eBay.

Anyone know the history of these London made Ormston steels?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Peda ... ba99ad47d5

A "Denley" (by Nigel Dennis and Gordon Huntley) re-badged and marketed by James "Ormston" Burns around 1966. Single neck, 4 pedal and twin neck 6 pedal versions. There was a very telling publicity shot of the twin with a girl in floral trouser suit behind it holding a lit and half smoked cigarette
Jimmy Burns was originally a lap steel player although much more famous as a standard (if any of his guitars can be called standard) guitar designer/maker.
One of the more frightening sights was to see him in Bob Hall's back shop (a music shop owner in my home town of Gateshead) dressing the frets of a new Guild acoustic with a big file and NO tape, masks or other protection!

A picture's worth a thousand words but perhaps not in this case, hope this helps along with the information, weight was not a consideration when this guitar was made!
Robert

Yeah Robert, dat's it!

Beautiful! If I still had my Denley I would be tempted to try to replicate that photo - although good taste and forum rules may prohibit such behaviour

Interesting that the Ormston looks a lot like the Denley I bought as my first PSG, but seems to have been a bit better 'value engineered'. My Denley had 2 pickups per neck, and separate volume and tone controls for each neck, plus there were coil taps in the pickups (controlled via push/pull switches in the potentiometers), though I don't know if this was a modification done by a previous owner. All the castings and hardware look to be identical to the Denley.



Part of me wishes I had kept it and persevered with tinkering, but it did the job as a learner instrument to get me hooked, and so I sold it on and bought a much more expensive guitar! Seemingly a common phenomenon amongst steel players!

Thanks for the wealth of information!

You’re right JD it should be in a museum. Is there a steel in the Horniman?