Sympathetic Steel

photo by David Sait

There is a description of the Sympathetic Steel further down the blog. I love this shot taken by my friend David Sait. It was shot one afternoon gig David, Michael and I had at the Gladstone. Sometime the three of us get together, sometimes we don't, but when we do we call ourselves Tres Lemon.
Click on the link below and that will take you to Michael’s web site. There you will see a Tres Lemon album and a link to download an mp3 we recorded. I believe the song is called "Don't touch that, you'll cut yourself"
Alexiteric.com

The Sympathetic Steel was first started some time ago after finding the lovely chrome top of a vacuum cleaner. Originally the hand carved steel fret board was made for this instrument, but after much debate I chose to go with more wood. The top six strings are laid out and tuned like a regular lap steel, with a pickup placed in the centre of the opening in the vacuum. Running under the fret board into the resonance chamber are 19 sympathetic strings that have there own pickup and volume control. The pickups can be used together or separately. Here are two close ups of the vacuum part and the neck. This instrument was also part of the Harbourfront Center show, and now resides along with the MV1 at Mezzrows