The British Steelies Society

One of the advantages to returning to the States for now is this little gem. Very, very happy with it. Giddy in fact. 25" scale length and I have it tuned in a sort of modified bebop tuning in Eb:

Looks great. That's a heck of a pedal collection too. Are you running through all of that?

tpj wrote:Looks great. That's a heck of a pedal collection too. Are you running through all of that?

Oh that ain't the half of it! (or even one-tenth <g>). They have their own closet. For real.

This is what I normally run through but I have over a hundred pedals and four different boards to choose from:



Other boards:







And plenty left over after that. All for different purposes, some for different instruments.

Gear closet in my home studio:

Whoa, Ed

Does this make you a closet pedalophile

You must be a heck of a tap dancer, to boot

Mind blowing set up Beautiful guitar, too

Fantastic. Always great to see someone embrace G.A.S. I thought I was bad with instruments...pale in comparison!

This is actually a serious question. Are you playing contemporary music or do you just like the flexibility of all the different layers you can delve into with the pedals?

Danny Mitchell wrote:Whoa, Ed

Does this make you a closet pedalophile

You must be a heck of a tap dancer, to boot

Mind blowing set up Beautiful guitar, too

Oh man, I got so sick of the tap dancing. One of the reasons the board I use most at the top is only 18 inches across (my pedal steel stand is 22 inches across).
Keeps it all between the bars and close to my feet. All soft, silent switches too. I'm sick on taking pedal clicks out of my recordings when playing in the same room with jazz people.

This will probably freak you all out (hopefully in a good way <g>) and give you a rough idea of what I go for, me and Henry Kaiser improvising live. No overdubs or edits. I'm on 8 string Weissenborn (which I prefer) on this but I mostly play lap steel on recordings 'cause it's easier to travel with:

https://soundcloud.com/kaiser-and-pettersen/sets/we-call-all-times-soon

Re-Whoa

I'm officially disconcerted. That is one challenging listen, Ed. All my resolving receptors have been left hanging out to dry . I doff my cap to your tenacity improvisation's got to be a hard one to sell.

Danny Mitchell wrote:Re-Whoa

I'm officially disconcerted. That is one challenging listen, Ed. All my resolving receptors have been left hanging out to dry . I doff my cap to your tenacity improvisation's got to be a hard one to sell.

Hhahaha, yeah it can be. The interesting thing as I was explaining to one of my Nashville buddies yesterday is that surprisingly, if you know where the audience is and how to find them it's actually an easier sell. I sell just as much of my improv alter-ego as I do my straight-forward, mainstream stuff. Probably because the improv audience finds you as opposed to the other way around and they're very loyal. In the mainstream it's very easy to get lost in the crowd. I like both actually but improv is very, very satisfying. It clears my head and opens up possibilities in other avenues. At least, that's the best way I can describe it.

Here's a recording of Cornelius Cardew's Treatise we did with the London Experimental Ensemble last January. 13 people improvising to a graphic score. Very challenging and extremely rewarding, especially since we made Eddie Prevost proud: https://soundcloud.com/london-experimental-ensemble

A much easier listen but challenging nonetheless.

Thanks for that insight, Ed, and, yes, I do understand what you mean about the audience seeking you out. In the late 60s, early 70s I used to trek over to the Jazz Centre Society to catch Tony Oxley and Derek Bailey's adventures in improvisation Then again I was doing a fair bit of LSD at the time I even managed to track down Oxley's album The Baptised Traveller, fairly recently.

I'll be giving these recordings a listen over the weekend, thanks. All power to you