[gmassman]

I play in a band called Rare Company. We recorded an album last year and have been playing gigs around San Francisco to promote it this year. We play acoustic originals, with a style that spans bluegrass, swing, folk and rock. I play dobro and fiddle, and it’s great fun to see people’s reactions to my “shiny slide guitar”. Check out our music and come to a show if you’re in the bay area!

[dofm]

Dobro as in squareneck/lap?

I (the user who prompted the creation of this thread, apparently) play a weissenborn (copy). Gigged it once but it is quite fussy about temperature changes, which can make it a bit tricky in a British music venue because (as I am sure you know about weissenborns) they kind of exist at the boundary of common sense, structure-wise. It's a really cheap laminate thing that sounds quite nice, and I am amazed it has not pulled itself apart, but it hates to go from cold to hot in a hurry.

Currently teaching myself some electric lap steel after years of acoustic only, with a gorgeous little Revelation RLS DLX, but I'd be tempted now by a Gretsch Bobtail and that Fishman Aura. (Nearly bought a Boxcar when they came out; played one for about an hour in a shop. Lovely.)

The weissenborn copy is mostly in open D or low-bass open G; with Newtone Alohas, which come up to pitch at lower tension, I've pushed it to FACFAC, though I have contemplated getting another to leave in David Lindley's favourite CGCGCE, which is a fabulously gutsy tuning on a weissenborn. The electric obviously can cope with anything from open D to GBDGBD.

[gmassman]

Yes my dobro is a squareneck built by Richard Deneve. It’s tuned to open G, typical for the bluegrass style. I haven’t ventured into lap steel but I have played a little when friends give me the opportunity. Personally I find acoustic instruments incredible just for their portability. Also everyone and their parents owns an acoustic guitar, so finding people to play with has never been an issue :)

For me, music started out as a practice of getting better and developing my abilities as a songwriter. As I’ve gotten older though it’s shifted more towards sharing the joy of playing with others. Jamming with people and making them happy by sharing songs is a reward in and of itself.

[dofm]

My picking is not fast enough or consistent enough for bluegrass unfortunately, but I will end up with a dobro one day! The weissenborn type I play has a similar scale length and luckily my lap steel is not the shortest (23") so my brain is not being truly warped by short scale.

Always been a bit of an admirer of Jerry Douglas (and Al Perkins, who I saw in 1992 with Emmylou Harris at the Crystal Palace Bowl in London — AFAIR he also dropped in on Mark O'Connor's set).

[jimnotgym]

I never quite get band together. I'm the insufferable guitarist who doesn't learn songs but improvises long solos instead