I currently own one Emmons push-pull guitar, a newer Fessenden guitar (pictures and setups below), and just picked up the Sho-Bud in the middle, above.

The Beast (on the right in the picture above) is a black mica 1969 Emmons single-neck 12-string guitar built on a D-12 frame, with the E9/B6 Universal Tuning, six pedals and six knee levers.

The (Cherry) Bomb (above left) is my new cherry / birdseye mica Fessenden guitar. It is setup almost identically to the black one, but is on a D-10 frame. It is rapidly replacing the Beast as my favorite gigging mo-chine.

The Blonde Bud is my only natural lacquer guitar and it sounds great and looks great. It has the Beast 6x6 setup with one extra pedal (B to A on 5 and 9).

The Tank is a rosewood mica Emmons double-neck 10-string with E9 and C6 tunings and nine pedals and nine knee levers. I recently sold this guitar to Brad Sarno in St. Louis. He's giving it the TLC it deserves. He has done some investigation and has concluded that it is actually a 1969 guitar. Since the endplate with the S/N is not original, it is difficult to determine the exact date.

My black Fessenden guitar (above left) is a single-12 on a frame and a half. It is loaded up with 8 and 8 and every useful change I could think of. It is somewhat of an experiment done in collaboration with Jerry Fessenden to see how many levers I could cram on essentially a single neck guitar and still be playable. It sounds great, like all of Jerry's guitars. Click on the link below for more info. I sold it when I got the double body cherry mica guitar.

The Babe was my 1980 black mica ZumSteel. A single-12 on a D-10 frame, it served me well for 20 years and was my only guitar for most of that time. I can't say enough about Bruce Zumsteg's craftsmanship and customer orientation.

NOTE: I'll add some other pictures of my ZumSteel and MSA guitars when I can get them scanned.

I happened upon a pair of 1970 Standel Custom 15's. I play small venues with one and larger ones with both. This link leads to pictures of my favorite steel amp of all time.

My current favorite mult-fx box is the Boss GT-6. It does amp modeling and is the equivalent of a dozen stomp boxes in one unit.

My alternate 'small gig rig' consists of a 1976 Peavey Session 400 amp which has been removed from the original cabinet and installed in a smaller cabinet built by my friend (and KILLER guitar player) Jack Dailey to house just the amplifier and reverb tank. I use amp reverb, a Boss DD-5 delay, a Goodrich Super-Bro Dobro Simulator, and a Digitech RP-100 multi-effects/modeling unit for chorus, flange, distortion, and other effects.

I sometimes use a Digitech 2112 as a preamp and signal processor. The link below describes how I use that processor to get what I feel is an appropriate steel guitar sound