Here at the Stobie & Co workshop authentic bottleneck slides are crafted from the necks of old wine and port bottles. Each slide is cut, shaped and polished by hand in a process that takes a couple hours and makes a perfect addition to the kit bag of any acoustic or electric guitarist. The deep, mellow tones produced by real bottle glass are far superior to anything you can get out of a mass produced pyrex slide found in most guitar stores. What more could you ask for?
The 'Ol Gem Masta at work
The stobie & co workshop was set up in 2008 when I bought a new single cone resonator but could not buy a real glass slide locally. My father in law gave me his old ‘Gem Masta’ , a 1970s belt driven unit built to cut, polish and shape precious stones, which turned out to be the perfect machine to cut and polish bottleneck slides. My first attempts were pretty rough but three years, and over 500 slides later, the slides that emerge from the workshop are as good as any in the world and find homes in Mississippi, Tokyo, Melbourne, Paris and everywhere in between.
The Workshop
To go from bottle to bottleneck slide is a 9 step process that plays out over a couple of hours. It starts with a kerosene cooled diamond saw to cut the necks, continues with various grades of grinders and sand paper and finishes with three grades of polishing powders. The final product is a one of a kind authentic bottleneck slide that will last a lifetime.
Head over to the General Store to see what we’ve got in stock.
Legend has it that Robert Johnson used to steal the brass bushes out of tractors to use as a slide. We've managed to get our hands on a handful of these hard to find tractor parts, given them a light sand and polished the hell out of them.