Website Index

Beginner's FAQ - Overview of the learning process and other beginner topics.
Your First Steel Guitar - Tips and advice on buying vintage or newly manufactured instruments.
About String Gauges - String gauge chart for Hawaiian steel guitar plus information on gauges for long and short scale instruments, use of wound, unwound, flatwound, and semi-flat wound strings, and other issues.
Injury Prevention - John's 'tale of woe' and how proper playing technique and training can prevent repetitive stress injuries.
SGW Interview - Excerpted reprint of John Ely's Steel Guitar World magazine interview by Robbie Bossert.
How to Tune Up - Use of the elecronic tuner and the problem of 'temper' tuning with the recommended Adjusted Tuning settings.

My Tunings and Settings - My Hawaiian steel guitar tunings and tuner settings -- the Adjusted Tuning scheme
Tunings of the Pros - A list of tunings used by professionals in Hawaii and around the world.
SGW Tunings Article - John Ely's Steel Guitar World article on tunings for lap steel guitar.

Advanced Voicing Locator - John Ely's chord voicing locator for steel guitarists who know a little about chord construction. The script finds all positions for any chord voicing in any tuning, including open string positions.
Generic Chord Locator - John Ely's generic chord finder for beginner and advanced lap steel guitarists.

Arrangements Overview -
TextTab Chord Study #1 - Chord progression study in the key of F.
TextTab Chord Study #2 - More examples in the key of F
Arrangement Downloads - Download a much improved sample arrangement and a tablature key, now available as high resolution PDF files. My String Gauge Chart can also be downloaded in PDF format.
TextTab Notation Key - An explanation of text-based tablature notation.
Arrangements Catalog - A list of arrangements currently completed or planned.

Cool Steels - Cool instrument photos
Wiring Diagrams - Much improved schematics for select steel guitars and volume pedals in PDF format

Guestbook - Add yourself to my mailing list and give me valuable input on your favorite tunings, future arrangement requests, and comments about this site.