B-Bender

B-BENDER

The Basic of the B-Bender Guitar

 

 

 

Here’s a picture of the inside of the Parson/White B-Bender.

 

B-Bender Makers

This is a list of SOME of the B-Bender makers. If you know of others who are good please email me and I’ll add them to this list!

Parson/White

This is the original B-Bender as created by Gene Parson and Clarence White. This system it’s quite invasive.

Parson/Green

This is a variation of the previous one and it’s the one Fender uses on the Nashville B-Bender Telecaster.

Dave Evans

The most famous user of this type is Albert Lee. It’s again a quite invasive system.

Joe Glaser

Joe is Nashville’s most famous luthier (guitar repair). He’s the man responsible for most of the B-Benders used in Nashville (and on most country recordings). The Glaser bender are the less invasive. Together with the McVay I think this is the best B-Bender available.

Charlie McVay

Charlie does all the G-Bender for Brad Paisley. He uses a similar system to the Glaser so it’s again no-invasive. As for the Glaser, this one is as good as it gets IMHO.

Hipshot

Will Ray of Hellecasters is the most famous user of this type of bender. It’s a bit different from all the others and not invasive at all! (Just two screws and that’s it!). It feels different from a normal bender so you just have to try and see if it ‘works’ for you.

Various

There are many variations available for the B-Bender: Bigsby Palm Bender, Hipshot Palm Lever, Duesenberg Guitars multibender, Shelton bender and many others, but certainly one particular mention goes to Forrest Lee Jr benders which also work on acoustic guitars! Hear it and him in action in Sunny Sweeney’s track “Refresh My Memory”

 

B-Bender Famous Songs

This is a list of SOME of the songs where a B-Bender has been used. Honestly this list could become stupidly long.. so I’m just writing a few… If you have better suggestions, please email me!

The Byrds

Tulsa Country
The Eagles

Peaceful Easy Feeling

Albert Lee

Sweet Little Lisa
Alan Jackson

All American Country Boy
Dwight Yoakam

Blame The Vain
Sunny Sweeney

Refresh My Memory (acoustic B-Bender in action!!)

 

What strings shall I buy?

Any set of string would do the job, but most people would use a 0.13 for the B (which is a normal B string in a 0.10-0.46 set). The reason is simply because it doesn’t break as easily as a thinner one!