Tone Bar Questions

[Mike Dexter]

After many years lay off from learning lap steel I am wanting to play again. I am asking advice regarding the tone bar & finger picks.
Tone Bars.
a) Which type of tone bar do you prefer?--the round bullet type or the more flatter type with slight cut out for thumb / finger? Make?
b) Tone bars come at different prices--from cheap to expensive--beware of the cheap ones?

Finger & thumb Picks
Which make do you use & prefer?

Many thanks.

[Tony Russell Davis]

For lap steel, or pedal steel you must have a bullet nose bar to cope with certain slants, particularly split slants. I would favour a bar like (not necessarily THE) Dunlop 920; so use that as a yardstick for size, it suits a 6, 7 or even 8 string lap steel and is not at odds with a 10. Basil makes super bars to your spec. in polymer, Ben Burrows make custom bars of steel, I have a couple from both and are excellent. It's Dobro players that tend towards a Stevens bar (Shubb for example) but the technique involves much lifting off and hammering on of the bar and the shaped sides and top suit that; they don't do much slant work and the "squared" off nose is poor for that anyway.
Plastic thumb and metal finger picks. Dunlop work for both, National fingerpicks are fine too, Herco thumbies are great if you can find them. Gauges are very much to preference. I like Herco thumbpicks, Dunlop second choice and 20-25 gauge fingerpicks (almost any brand) but several friends prefer lighter, even down to 15-18. That's down to you to try some and see.

[JohnDavisStringsHere]

Cousin Tony spot on again, Bens Bars great value for the money ....I have a notion that Baz's poly bars will stave off the arthritis better than cold steel but I could be wrong.... My preference on picks Dunlop .25 for some reason music shops seem to sell 18/20 NBG to me.

[Ken Byng]

For lap steel, or pedal steel you must have a bullet nose bar to cope with certain slants, particularly split slants. I would favour a bar like (not necessarily THE) Dunlop 920; so use that as a yardstick for size, it suits a 6, 7 or even 8 string lap steel and is not at odds with a 10. Basil makes super bars to your spec. in polymer, Ben Burrows make custom bars of steel, I have a couple from both and are excellent. It's Dobro players that tend towards a Stevens bar (Shubb for example) but the technique involves much lifting off and hammering on of the bar and the shaped sides and top suit that; they don't do much slant work and the "squared" off nose is poor for that anyway.
Plastic thumb and metal finger picks. Dunlop work for both, National fingerpicks are fine too, Herco thumbies are great if you can find them. Gauges are very much to preference. I like Herco thumbpicks, Dunlop second choice and 20-25 gauge fingerpicks (almost any brand) but several friends prefer lighter, even down to 15-18. That's down to you to try some and see.

Tony is very much spot on with his post. I have around 10 different bars, and in the main for my 10 string lap steel I use various size bullet nose bars. The 3 main bullet nose manufacturers that I use are BJS (chrome over steel), Basil Henriques (polymer) and Ben Burrow (polished stainless steel). I use either 7/8" or 1" size, and the 1" is my main go to diameter bar these days. I have a couple of 7/8" Telonics bullet nose plastic bars that I occasionally use on pedal steel in conjunction with a resonator modelling box for a pseudo Dobro sound.

For playing a resonator guitar, I mainly use a Beard 20/10. That is a 20 degree angle at one end and a 10 degree angle at the other. (See pic below). The Beard is chrome plated over steel. Very slick and great for hammering on and off too. A Stevens bar works great, and a number of similar shaped Stevens-styled bars can be found on eBay - mainly made in China and very inexpensive.



Pick wise, very much like Tony. Blue or red Herco thumb picks, and Dunlop - 15 or 18 gauge. 25 gauge is way too stiff for me, and difficult to shape right.