Things went well, and Buddy's name and involvement ensured that many pros put in orders for the new Emmons guitar. When it came back, it was much more playable and the two of them agreed to go into partnership and market the guitar under the trade name of Emmons. He suggested to Lashley what could be done to improve the actions, who subsequently went away and carried out Buddy's mods. Buddy said that it looked fabulous with the black mica, but that the pedal and lever action was too stiff. Lashley offered to build a prototype of buddy's ideas, and came back after a period of time and showed it to Buddy. Buddy said it was a kind of Sho~Bud clone, but that while the lacquer finish was poor, it was well engineered.īuddy showed Lashley his parts, drawings and told him of his ideas. About that time, Ron Lashley Snr came to one of Buddy's gigs, and brought one of his prototype guitars for Buddy to check out. Buddy's father was a mechanical engineer, and made some parts from Buddy's drawings and plans. Shot didn't see that it was necessary to change things, so nothing happened. Buddy took his ideas to Shot Jackson who he was in partnership with in the Sho~Bud business. Not just for his guitar name coming back, but with the influx of pedal steel guitar interest recently.īuddy was interviewed back in the early 1970's by the great Bob Powell, editor of Country Music People for a special edition that featured pedal steel players.īuddy said that he designed a new changer, a new keyhead and a new compact body that was covered in mica glass. I'm a spiritual person, I'm sure Buddy is looking down with a smile. Just hope someday, someone makes a Franklin Pedabro replica to relieve my urge '65s have been shooting up in price recently to astronomical levels. Either way.it is nice to see the '65 back. They may go down the "it has to be identical to the real thing" production method. The technology is definitely there but I don't know how they are going about it in terms of production. Good thing we didn't because they shut down without a trace not long after. My dad actually nearly ordered some S10 reproduction push pull from them before he ordered my Show Pro. I have heard some horror stories over the years about ordering Emmons steels direct to Britain during the Lashley Era. I didn't want to get into politics on Facebook so I stayed out of it to avoid any offense but I'm sure most BSS members will be in agreement that the brand has now been taken over with much better people. I did see a couple of comments about how great it was the Lashley's were not involved. This is pretty seismic news in steel guitar land, but many years too late for poor old Buddy. The technology is there these days with modern CNC machines to reproduce the classic push pull guitar to a highly consistent and incredible quality. He ran down the company and reduced the standard of workmanship to a completely unacceptable level. Buddy was ripped off with his part in the Emmons company many years ago by Senior, and Junior was totally without shame in his lack of customer service. The Emmons name and that of the Lashley family are now untangled. Ken Byng wrote: It was only a matter of time.