![]() Out with his grandparents to see his uncle’s gospel group perform, they asked young Howard to sing a song with them on stage. He’s one of those three-fingered banjo players that you hear about,” he says. He cut his left ring finger off at a sawmill and was a banjo player. I had an uncle John who played the mandolin and an uncle Ray. ![]() “Grandma Josephine Poole had a lot of brothers and sisters. Young for most, but not so much when most of your older relatives are fully immersed in bluegrass. When they ask, Howard will tell people he’s been performing for about seven years, but his first paid gig was actually when he was eight. Now at just twenty-five, Howard’s stepping into his own and leaving the growing pains behind. “It could dig you out of a hole if you let it,” he says. He considered the bandroom one of the safest places he could go, when he couldn’t be anywhere else mentally. “That’s what I did for at least six to seven years just to get away from the stress at home and later on in college with some of the stress from classes.” Even as a student enrolled in the University of Louisiana’s music program, music maintained an element of getaway. He would ride in the left lane, so he could see anyone coming toward him, and anyone driving behind him would just pass him anyway. “Which wasn’t very safe, but I had this hack,” he says. There was a time when he would plug into headphones, mount his bike, and trail around his neighborhood. MUSIC FOR MASON HOWARD wasn’t always communal, especially when he was younger. His impressive range of ability is embodied in the amount of instruments he owns, his natural knack for composing melodies, and the people who have taught him along the way.ĪRTICLE BY VANELIS RIVERA AND IMAGES BY ANDREW BAILEY Sort of like collecting Pontiac station wagons instead of Ferrari Daytonas.Mason Howard will tell people he’s been performing for about seven years, but his first paid gig was actually when he was eight. Why collect a Professional or Pro II just to collect them when over 20.000 of these "Standard" guitars were built? Most aren't original nowadays anyway. The only guitar ever build with a roller in the base of the finger for one thing, this seems to be a necessary and useful feature, no wear, elemiates friction and makes pedal action very easy and a couple of other interesting advantages. Look at the name players that have used them. If there is such a thing as a Sho-Bud collector now, these should be the ones they should go after, not because they were built in a very small number, but because they are so great. Remeber, there were over a hundred Bigsbys built, only seven Super Pro IIs. Hence the seemingly ridiculous high prices, which are really very low for what they really are. Thank you for posting this Ken, it will help folks to be a little more familiar with these very unique steel guitars. All pickups had the Sho-Bud name on the top, laser cut. Yes, these are the very pickups that came on the super Pro twos. The keyheads and pedal bar are the only things that the Super Pro II shares with the "standard" Sho-Bud production guitars. ![]() Ken, the pickups don't look standard? Standard what? Nothing hardly is standard on the Super-Pro II. ![]()
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