Junior Brown Guitars & Gear: The Guit-Steel Inventor’s Complete Rig

Background

Jamieson “Junior” Brown was born on June 12, 1952, in Cottonwood, Arizona, and grew up in various towns across the American Southwest and Midwest — a childhood that gave him early exposure to the country, western, and honky-tonk music that would become the foundation of his career. His musical education was eclectic and largely self-directed: he absorbed classic country from the radio and from records, studied pedal steel guitar intensively, and developed the guitar technique that would support his later career through years of playing in Texas bars and roadhouses.

The central challenge he faced in the early part of his career was a practical one: he heard music that required both guitar and steel guitar simultaneously, and the conventional solution — two separate instruments played by two separate players — either wasn’t available to him or didn’t produce the specific musical result he was imagining. The solution was to build an instrument that combined both: the guit-steel, a double-necked instrument with a six-string electric guitar neck and a lap steel neck mounted on a single body, allowing a single player to switch between them fluidly within a performance.

The guit-steel’s development — which involved multiple luthiers and years of refinement before Brown arrived at the instrument that satisfied him — was the defining event of his career, because it allowed him to express the full range of his musical conception without depending on additional players. The instrument enabled a style of playing that had no precedent: the guitar neck for rhythm and chord-based country playing, the steel neck for the singing, sliding, pedal-steel-influenced melodic lines that characterised the best of Texas country and western swing.

Brown signed to Curb Records in the early 1990s and released a series of albums — Guit-Steel (1990, independent), Junior High (1995), Semi-Crazy (1996), Feelin’ Good (1996), and subsequent records — that built a devoted following while defying commercial country radio’s increasingly narrow definitions of the genre. His live performances — characterised by extraordinary instrumental skill, self-deprecating wit, and his wife Tanya Rae Brown’s contributions on bass — became legendary among fans who understood what they were witnessing.

He has continued performing and recording into the 2020s, maintaining the specific approach that has defined his career from the beginning: the guit-steel as the primary instrument, the Texas roadhouse as the natural performance context, and the combination of technical mastery and genuine musical humility that marks the best country musicians. His influence on subsequent generations of country players who value both technical accomplishment and authentic roots has been substantial if not always acknowledged.

Junior Brown Guitars Gear: The Complete Rig

Guitars

Junior Brown’s primary instrument is the guit-steel — the double-necked instrument he designed and had built to combine a standard six-string electric guitar neck with a lap steel guitar neck on a single body. Understanding this instrument requires understanding what both component instruments bring to it and why their combination produces musical possibilities that neither alone provides.

The guitar neck on the guit-steel is essentially a Telecaster-style six-string electric — single-coil pickups, standard scale length (typically 25.5 inches, consistent with the Fender Telecaster), and a playing feel similar to a standard electric guitar. The specific pickup configuration on Brown’s instruments has typically been a single-coil bridge pickup with the characteristic Telecaster twang — bright, cutting, with the specific attack and articulation that makes country rhythm playing as recognisable as it is. The neck pickup, warmer and rounder, provides the complementary tonal dimension for specific chord and melody work.

The lap steel neck on the guit-steel is an E9 tuning pedal steel-influenced instrument — a horizontal playing surface designed to be played with a steel bar (slide bar) rather than conventional fretting. The E9 tuning (from low to high: B-D-E-F#-G#-B-E-G#-D-E on a standard ten-string pedal steel, adapted to the eight or fewer strings that the guit-steel’s steel neck typically accommodates) is the standard Nashville pedal steel tuning, chosen for its specific chord voicing possibilities and its compatibility with country music’s harmonic language. Playing the steel neck requires a completely different physical technique from the guitar neck: the bar is laid across the strings and moved along the neck, with no fretting in the conventional sense, producing the characteristic sliding, singing tone of steel guitar.

The guit-steel’s body is typically a single-piece design that accommodates both necks — the guitar neck angled for conventional upright playing and the steel neck horizontal for lap steel technique. Playing both instruments within a single performance requires switching physically between playing postures — upright for the guitar neck, horizontal for the steel neck — which Brown manages with remarkable fluency that took years of performance experience to develop.

He has had multiple guit-steel instruments built over the years by various luthiers, with each iteration incorporating refinements based on his evolving understanding of what the instrument needed to do. The specific details of body wood, scale length, and pickup configuration have been adjusted across different builds, but the fundamental concept has remained consistent since its development in the 1980s.

He also plays standard Fender Telecaster instruments — the two-pickup single-coil guitar that is the foundational electric guitar of country and honky-tonk music. The Telecaster’s specific combination of bridge pickup brightness, neck pickup warmth, and the mechanical simplicity and reliability that suits the demands of heavy touring was the natural choice for Brown’s guitar playing when the full guit-steel instrument wasn’t appropriate or available. Vintage late-1960s and early-1970s Telecasters with Alnico 5 single-coil pickups (measuring approximately 6.5k to 7.5k ohms DC resistance) have been among his preferred instruments.

String gauges on the guitar neck run medium — typically .010–.046 — appropriate for the bending and rhythm work that country guitar requires. The steel neck strings are calibrated specifically for E9 tuning, with gauges chosen to produce appropriate tension and tone for each individual string in the tuning system.

Amps

Junior Brown’s amplification is straightforwardly rooted in the American valve tradition — Fender amplifiers, chosen for the clean, warm character that country music and honky-tonk have always required. He is not a Marshall player or a high-gain player; his musical tradition demands clear, articulate, warm amplification that reproduces the natural character of the Telecaster and the steel neck without imposing its own tonal personality.

His primary amplifiers have been Fender Twin Reverb combos — the 85-watt, 2×12 combo running two 6L6 output valves with clean headroom sufficient to remain undistorted at high stage volumes. The Twin’s 6L6 character — warm in the low end, clear in the midrange, with the specific American tonal signature that Jensen C12N speakers contribute — suited both the guitar neck’s Telecaster twang and the steel neck’s smooth, sliding tone. The same amplifier serving both instruments required a character that could do justice to both tonal extremes within a single performance.

He also used Fender Bassman amplifiers at various points — the late-1950s or early-1960s 4×10 combo version that produces a different character from the Twin: warmer in the low end, with a slightly more compressed clean tone and the specific Jensen P10R 10-inch speaker sound that is fundamental to early country electric guitar tone. The Bassman’s character suits the western swing and classic honky-tonk material in Brown’s repertoire particularly well, providing a warmth and vintage quality that the cleaner, more modern Twin doesn’t replicate.

For specific touring applications, Brown used Fender Deluxe Reverb amplifiers for their more manageable size and weight while maintaining the Fender character his playing required. The Deluxe’s 6V6 output valves produce a different quality of saturation from the Twin’s 6L6 — slightly earlier breakup, a rounder midrange — that suited certain lower-volume performance contexts better than the Twin’s cleaner headroom.

Effects

Junior Brown’s effects chain is minimal — consistent with the country and honky-tonk tradition where the instrument’s natural tone is the primary tonal identity and effects are selective additions rather than structural components. The steel guitar especially requires transparent signal path: the specific harmonic content of the steel bar sliding across strings is the musical event, and processing that obscures or distorts it undermines the music’s character.

A reverb unit — either the onboard spring reverb of his Fender amplifiers or a separate spring or digital reverb pedal — is the most consistent effect in his chain. Country music’s relationship with reverb is deep and specific: the slap-back echo of early Sun Records and the reverberant sound of Nashville studio recording both reflect a tradition of guitar sound that includes reverb as a natural ambient quality rather than as a distinct effect. Brown uses reverb to add the spatial dimension that live performance without a purpose-built acoustic space typically lacks, keeping the reverb level subtle enough that it contributes atmosphere without dominating the direct guitar sound.

A volume pedal is a central element of his steel guitar technique — allowing him to produce the characteristic steel guitar “swells” where notes emerge from silence and grow to full volume, eliminating the attack transient that the bar striking the strings would otherwise produce. This technique — common among pedal steel players — produces the smooth, flowing note onset that distinguishes steel guitar playing from conventional guitar playing, and the volume pedal is the primary tool that enables it on the lap steel neck of the guit-steel.

Minimal additional effects appear in his signal chain — occasionally a mild compression pedal to even out the dynamic variations between guitar and steel neck playing, and sometimes a touch of delay for atmospheric passages. His overall effects philosophy is consistent with the country tradition: trust the instrument and the amplifier, and add effects only when they serve a specific and clearly defined musical purpose.

Playing Style & Tone Philosophy

Junior Brown’s playing style combines two distinct technical traditions that most musicians spend their entire careers developing in isolation — conventional electric guitar technique and lap steel technique — into a single fluid performance approach that switches between them within a song or even within a single musical passage. The technical demands of this combined approach are extraordinary: each instrument requires completely different left-hand technique, different right-hand technique, different physical posture, and different conceptual approach to pitch and harmony.

On the guitar neck, Brown’s playing reflects the Texas country and honky-tonk tradition: the aggressive, chicken-picking right-hand technique that produces the sharp, percussive rhythm playing characteristic of country guitar, combined with lead lines that draw on the pentatonic and major-scale vocabulary of country lead playing with the blues inflections that distinguish Texas country from its Nashville counterpart. His chord work is rhythmically sophisticated — the specific rhythmic patterns of honky-tonk country guitar, which lock with the rhythm section and drive the music forward, are deeply embedded in his playing through years of roadhouse performance experience.

On the steel neck, his playing reflects the E9 pedal steel tradition: the smooth, singing melodic lines that slide from note to note rather than jumping between them, the specific chord voicings available in E9 tuning, and the volume swell technique that gives steel guitar its characteristic attack-free note onset. The steel neck’s playing technique — the bar held lightly against the strings, the right hand picking specific strings or using the bar to produce tremolo effects — is completely different from conventional guitar technique, and Brown’s fluency at switching between the two within a performance reflects decades of specific dual-instrument development.

His vocal style is as distinctive as his instrumental approach — a dry, Texas-inflected delivery with impeccable timing and the ability to invest wit and irony into straightforward country language that is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the best honky-tonk tradition. His original songs — often built around elaborate puns, wordplay, and self-deprecating humour — reflect a lyrical intelligence that his purely instrumental abilities sometimes overshadow in discussions of his career.

Tonally, Brown’s philosophy is the country musician’s philosophy: the instrument should sound like the instrument, the amplifier should serve the instrument’s natural character, and effects should be used sparingly and specifically. The guit-steel’s natural tonal range — from the Telecaster twang of the guitar neck to the smooth, bell-like sustain of the steel neck — covers most of the tonal territory his music requires without significant electronic enhancement.

How to Sound Like Junior Brown

Guitar Approach

Without a guit-steel — which is the authentic instrument but not widely available commercially — a standard Fender Telecaster is the closest approximation for the guitar neck material. Use the bridge pickup for the bright, cutting country rhythm playing; the neck pickup for warmer, more sustained passages. Medium strings (.010–.046) provide the tension and tone that country bending requires. Develop the chicken-picking right-hand technique — alternating between a flat pick and the middle and ring fingers to produce the percussive, rhythmically accented attack characteristic of country guitar.

For the steel element of his sound without the guit-steel, a lap steel guitar in E9 tuning or a standard Dobro in open G tuning can approximate the steel neck’s contribution. A volume pedal is essential for the swell technique that characterises steel guitar playing.

Amp Approach

A Fender Twin Reverb — clean, warm, with the Jensen speaker character of the blackface or silverface era — is the authentic amplification. Run it clean: country guitar’s natural tonal beauty requires transparent amplification, and the Twin’s headroom allows the Telecaster’s natural character to come through without compression or coloration. Add the onboard spring reverb at a modest setting for the ambient dimension that country recording traditionally employed.

Junior Brown Amp Settings (Fender Twin Reverb)

Control	Setting	Notes
Volume	4–6	Clean headroom — Telecaster and steel need transparent amplification
Treble	5–6	Moderate — Telecaster bridge pickup is inherently bright
Middle	5	Neutral mids for transparent character
Bass	4	Controlled bass for country clarity
Reverb	3–4	Moderate spring reverb — country tradition requires ambient quality
Tremolo	Off	Rarely used — volume pedal swells serve the same function more musically
Volume pedal (steel)	Full then swell	Essential for steel guitar attack-free note onset

Influence & Legacy

Junior Brown’s legacy within country music is somewhat paradoxical: he is universally respected by musicians and connoisseurs of the genre as one of its most technically accomplished and most genuinely original figures, while remaining outside the mainstream commercial country success that his quality might have suggested was achievable. This paradox — authentic genius without commercial mainstream breakthrough — is not unusual in country music, which has a long tradition of artists who are valued within the community of serious listeners while remaining beneath the commercial radar of contemporary Nashville.

His invention of the guit-steel — and his development of a playing approach that uses the instrument’s unique capabilities to their fullest — represents a genuine contribution to the range of possible expression available to country musicians. The instrument has not been widely adopted by other players (the technical demands of dual-instrument mastery are substantial), but its existence has demonstrated possibilities that influenced how subsequent country guitarists thought about the relationship between guitar and steel guitar in country music.

His recordings have served as a touchstone for players who value both the technical tradition of country guitar and steel guitar playing and the lyrical, humorous, deeply American cultural tradition of honky-tonk songwriting. Within the Americana and roots music communities that value these qualities, Brown’s influence has been consistent and acknowledged.

For players exploring the country guitar and steel guitar traditions that Brown synthesised, the rigs of Jerry Donahue — whose Telecaster-based country approach shows how similar technical sophistication can develop in a British folk-rock context — and Will Ray, whose work with the Hellecasters explored comparable country guitar territory with similarly sophisticated technique, provide illuminating comparison. The honky-tonk tradition that underpins Brown’s music connects to Arlen Roth‘s country guitar work, which shows how deep immersion in the country tradition can produce playing of genuine authenticity.

The Guit-Steel: How It Was Built and Why

The development of the guit-steel deserves a more detailed account than any brief equipment description can provide, because it illustrates something important about the relationship between musical vision and instrument design. Brown did not invent the guit-steel to be different, or to create a novelty, or to impress audiences with an unusual instrument. He invented it because the music he was hearing in his head required it, and no existing instrument could produce it.

The specific problem he was solving was this: the music he wanted to make — classic Texas honky-tonk and western swing, rooted in the tradition of artists like Bob Wills and Lefty Frizzell — featured steel guitar as a primary melodic voice alongside the lead guitar. In the original recordings of this music, the two instruments were played by two different musicians: a guitar player handling the rhythm and lead work, and a steel guitarist handling the sliding, singing melodic lines that gave the music its characteristic sound. Brown was a solo performer whose artistic vision required him to incorporate both voices, and hiring a second player changed the music’s character in ways he didn’t want — you can hear when two musicians are playing together rather than one musician playing both parts of a conception that started as a single mental event.

The double-neck guitar — an instrument with two separate necks on a single body — existed as a concept: Gibson and other manufacturers had built double-neck instruments for specific players (most famously the Jimmy Page double-neck SG/12-string that appears on “Stairway to Heaven”). But the existing double-neck designs were oriented toward different applications — two guitar necks, or guitar and bass — and the specific combination of a conventionally played electric guitar neck with a lap steel neck required a custom design that didn’t exist in the market.

The first guit-steel was built in the 1980s by various luthiers working with Brown to develop the concept. The specific challenges were significant: the two necks had to be comfortable to play in their respective positions (upright for the guitar neck, horizontal for the steel neck) while being mounted on a single body that was manageable in weight and balance. The switching between the two playing positions — which required changing not just the physical posture but the entire technical approach to the instrument — had to be fluid enough to be performable in a live context without awkward pauses.

The result, after years of development and refinement, was an instrument that looks unusual but plays naturally for someone who has developed the specific dual-instrument technique it requires. The guitar neck provides Telecaster-style twang for rhythm and lead playing; the steel neck provides the smooth, sliding steel guitar voice for melodic material. The transition between the two — a matter of tilting the instrument and changing hand position — takes a fraction of a second in Brown’s hands and is musically transparent in performance. The instrument is genuinely right for the music it was designed to make.

The Texas Roadhouse Tradition: Playing for the People

Junior Brown’s musical formation is inseparable from the Texas roadhouse circuit — the small bars, honky-tonks, and dance halls that have sustained the live music tradition in Texas for more than a century and that shaped the specific character of the music he plays. Understanding this performance context illuminates both the equipment choices and the playing philosophy that define his approach.

The Texas roadhouse is a democratic performance space. The audience is there to drink, dance, and be entertained, and their verdict on a performer is expressed immediately and without diplomatic restraint: if the music is good, people dance and cheer; if it isn’t, they talk through it and ignore the stage. This immediate, unfiltered audience feedback develops a specific kind of performer — one who knows how to hold an audience’s attention, how to read the room and adjust accordingly, and how to maintain energy and enthusiasm across a three-hour set that covers every mood from weeping honky-tonk ballad to foot-stomping shuffle.

The equipment choices this performance context demands are the reliable, road-tough tools of a working musician: the Telecaster’s mechanical simplicity and durability, the Fender Twin’s robust construction and consistent performance across varying venue conditions, the volume pedal’s simple mechanical operation that can be serviced in the field. Brown’s equipment, while musically sophisticated, is also practically rugged — the tools of a musician whose instrument is subject to the physical reality of loading in and out of venues, setting up on stages of questionable electrical supply, and performing night after night in conditions that would test the reliability of less robust equipment.

The specific musical demands of roadhouse performance also shaped his technique in specific ways. Playing for dancing audiences requires impeccable rhythm — the groove has to be consistent enough that people can dance to it, which means the guitarist’s rhythmic pulse has to be as reliable as the drummer’s. Playing for general entertainment audiences (as opposed to seated listening audiences) requires a kind of musical engagement that communicates directly and immediately — technical sophistication in service of music that people respond to instinctively rather than intellectual music that rewards patient, attentive listening. Brown’s playing combines both: technically sophisticated enough to reward attentive listening, but accessible enough to communicate directly to a roadhouse full of people who are there for a good time.

The guit-steel in this performance context functions as an entertainment element as well as a musical instrument. Audiences who have never seen a guit-steel before are invariably fascinated by it — the unusual instrument demands visual attention and raises questions that Brown can address with his characteristic dry wit. The instrument’s novelty serves the performance, drawing audiences in before they’ve heard a note and making the subsequent music more memorable for the context in which it’s encountered. This integration of musical substance and entertainment value — the musician who is both genuinely skilled and genuinely entertaining — is a specific virtue of the roadhouse tradition that Brown embodies as fully as any contemporary country musician.

The Western Swing Connection: Bob Wills and Beyond

Junior Brown’s music is deeply rooted in the western swing tradition — the specifically Texan fusion of country, jazz, blues, and big band music that Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys developed in the 1930s and 1940s. Understanding this tradition and its specific influence on Brown’s music illuminates both why the guit-steel’s dual-instrument capability is musically necessary and how the specific technical choices in his equipment serve the musical tradition he’s working within.

Western swing was, at its core, a synthesis of diverse American musical traditions in service of dance music. The big band arrangements that Bob Wills drew on for his orchestrations, the jazz improvisation that his soloists practised within the country context, the blues inflections that gave the music its emotional directness, and the specifically country character of the vocals and harmonics — all of these elements were present simultaneously, creating music that could accommodate both a jazz trumpet solo and a steel guitar phrase in the same arrangement without incongruity.

The steel guitar’s role in western swing was central to its character. Players like Bob Dunn (who introduced jazz-influenced electric steel guitar to western swing in the 1930s) and Herb Remington established the steel guitar as the primary melodic voice in western swing arrangements, capable of the sustained, singing lines that the music required and the improvisational flexibility that jazz influence demanded. Brown’s guit-steel’s steel neck is the direct descendant of this tradition — the same instrument serving the same musical function, updated for the contemporary context in which he performs.

The specific E9 tuning he uses on the steel neck reflects the evolution of the western swing steel guitar tradition through the Nashville pedal steel of the 1950s and 1960s. The E9 tuning’s specific chord voicing possibilities — the major and dominant seventh chords that sit naturally within the tuning — are optimised for the country and western swing harmonic language, and Brown’s use of it connects his playing to the specific tradition of Nashville country steel guitar as well as to the older western swing tradition that predated it.

His original songs frequently draw on the western swing tradition for musical context — the shuffle rhythms, the jazz-influenced chord changes, the interplay between guitar and steel that defines the genre’s character — while updating the lyrical approach for a contemporary sensibility that values the humour and self-awareness of classic honky-tonk songwriting. This combination of traditional musical form and contemporary lyrical sensibility is one of the most difficult balancing acts in roots music, and Brown manages it with the specific lightness of touch that comes from decades of playing within the tradition rather than merely observing it from outside.

Brown’s guitar playing on the guitar neck of the guit-steel specifically reflects the chicken-picking tradition of Texas country — the right-hand hybrid picking technique that alternates between a flat pick and the middle and ring fingers to produce the specific percussive, articulated attack that distinguishes Texas country guitar from its Nashville counterpart. Developed by players like James Burton and Don Rich and extended by later Texas players, chicken-picking produces a specific rhythmic accent quality — a pop on specific notes within a rhythmic pattern — that conventional flat-picking doesn’t generate. The technique requires independent control of the pick and the fingers, which develops through specific practice rather than emerging automatically from conventional technique, and Brown’s facility at it reflects the decades of roadhouse performance in which it was his primary rhythmic and lead tool.

The Telecaster’s bridge pickup suits this technique particularly well. The sharp attack transient of the single-coil bridge pickup, combined with the chicken-picking technique’s natural percussive accent, produces a specific pop and bite on each plucked note that gives country rhythm guitar its characteristic snap. Run through a clean Fender Twin with appropriate spring reverb, this combination — Telecaster bridge pickup, chicken-picking technique, Fender 6L6 amplification — is one of the most instantly recognisable sounds in American music, and Junior Brown deploys it with the mastery of someone who has been playing in this tradition for his entire professional life. The equipment is the right equipment; the technique is the right technique; and the tradition they serve is the right tradition. That combination — equipment, technique, and tradition all aligned — is what produces music that sounds inevitable rather than calculated, as if no other choice could have been made because no other choice was needed.

Junior Brown continues to perform and record into the 2020s, maintaining the specific approach that has defined his career from the beginning: the guit-steel as primary instrument, the Texas roadhouse as natural performance context, and the combination of genuine technical mastery and authentic roots feeling that marks the best country music of any era. His gear story is inseparable from his music story, and both reward the attention of anyone who cares about how genuine American musical traditions are preserved and extended through the work of individual musicians who understand them from the inside.

The Fender Bassman’s specific role in Brown’s amplifier arsenal — providing a different character from the Twin Reverb for certain material — is worth specific examination, because the Bassman’s history and the reason its character differs from the Twin illuminates something important about the equipment choices of players rooted in the American tradition. The late-1950s Fender Bassman 4×10 combo — originally designed as a bass guitar amplifier before rock and roll players discovered its guitar tonal qualities — uses a cathode-follower tone stack circuit and a four-10-inch Jensen P10R speaker configuration that produces a fundamentally different tonal character from the Twin Reverb’s simpler tone stack and 12-inch speaker configuration. The Jensen P10R speakers — 10-inch ceramic-magnet units with a relatively limited bass response — produce a warm, slightly compressed character in the midrange that gives acoustic guitar and country electric guitar a specific vintage warmth. The four-speaker configuration means each individual speaker handles a smaller fraction of the total power, keeping the speakers in their linear operating range even at higher volume levels. The Bassman’s specific combination of cathode-follower EQ response, medium-power 6L6 output stage, and four small-speaker cabinet produced what many country and blues players of the late 1950s discovered was the ideal amplifier for their music — a discovery that Fender had not anticipated when designing a bass amplifier but that reflected the specific acoustic properties of the design in a way that transcended its intended application. Brown’s use of the Bassman for specific vintage-character material reflects this long history of country players finding in the amp’s character something uniquely suited to their music — a history that continues into the present wherever working country musicians are making the right equipment choices for the right musical reasons.

The volume pedal’s specific technical contribution to Brown’s steel guitar playing deserves more detail than its brief mention in the effects section provides. The steel guitar swell — bringing a note from silence to full volume after the attack, so that the note appears with a smooth onset rather than a sharp transient — is not merely a technique but a defining characteristic of the steel guitar’s musical voice. The steel bar striking the strings produces a percussive initial transient that is tonally different from the sustaining note that follows; eliminating this transient by starting at zero volume and increasing it after the attack produces the characteristic “from-nowhere” note onset that makes steel guitar so distinctive. The volume pedal must have a specific mechanical quality to enable this technique effectively: the taper of the pedal’s response — the relationship between pedal position and output volume — needs to be smooth and progressive rather than binary, allowing precise real-time control of the volume swell’s rate and shape. Ernie Ball volume pedals and other professional-grade units with the appropriate taper have been standard in steel guitar players’ rigs for decades, and Brown’s use of a volume pedal for this specific technique reflects his understanding of the steel guitar tradition and its specific technical requirements. The correct volume pedal for this technique is as much a part of the correct rig as the amplifier or the steel neck itself, and treating it as an afterthought would compromise the musical result that the technique is designed to achieve.

Junior Brown’s status as a genuine American original — a musician who invented his own instrument because no existing instrument could do what he needed, who built a career outside the commercial mainstream because his music was too specific and too good for it — places him in the company of the great American eccentrics who have kept the country tradition vital across generations of commercial standardisation. The guit-steel is his primary contribution to that tradition, but the music he has made with it — the recordings, the live performances, the decades of roadhouse shows that shaped his specific playing approach — is the deeper contribution. The equipment is extraordinary; the music it enables is more extraordinary still.

Frequently Asked Questions: Junior Brown Guitars & Gear