Why bent the B?

[Cheese]

why do b-benders just bent the b, wouldnt it be handyer if you could bent each string instead of just the b or g?

[BmoreTele]

That would be called a pedal steel.

The B string bend allows for a lot of specific tones found in country music. And some in western music too. :D

[ironweed]

If you do a search for "Phil Baugh" in this section, you can see a guitar set up with floor pedals & throttle cables to pull every string. And there are other guys that have put benders on every string -- I apologize but names are escaping me at the moment -- and do amazing things with them. There are many ways to play, but the B/C# change on the 2nd string is just like pedal no. 1 on a standard E9th pedal steel, and is a really good fit for a Tele -- as all the Clarence White disciples will tell ya.

[J. Hayes]

To me, bending the B string seems to be the most comfortable! I used mostly Bigsby Palm Pedals, later HipShot units, and now a P/W bender. One of my old palm pedal sets had a B, G, & D bender but in reality the B was used 98% of the time over the others. Later I used a HipShot with a B & G bender and same thing, the G wasn't hardly used. The B bender can be used with a lot of chord shapes on a guitar and it's easier to work into your playing. Boomer Castleman who invented the Bigsby Palm Pedals uses a six (6) lever unit and has worked out a system where he can play combinations and such and has really taken bending to new areas! Someone mentioned Phil Baugh, he had a great unit with the floor pedals but it just wasn't portable enough for most people to use and I believe it was cost prohibitive also.......JH in Va.

[ironweed]

Boomer Castleman -- that is exactly the name I couldn't remember last night. A couple of years ago he was selling a couple of guitars on e-bay as I recall, tricked out with bending levers on every string. Just thinking of how to use all those levers on a 6-string makes my head hurt.

[Don Miller]

I heard a recording where Bob Warford and Gene Parsons were discussing that...both Clarences tele, and Bob's guitar had changers that would pull strings 1-4 (or 2-5?)...the both ended up settling on bending just the B string....and Bob said that the B string is the one string you might want to bend, but in doing so with youre fingers, you lose the chord youre playing ...the others (1,3,4, etc,) you can bend but youre still holding the chord...and if you think about it, he's dead on right...

[jmiles]

No, he's not right! He's right for himself, and others who play like him. I have found so many things using the G bender that are just impossible to do with the B bender, that there's no way i would want a guitar with just a B bender. And, if I had to choose, I'd want the G bender!