The Steel Guitar Forum

Well, if you pop over to the maker thread, you will see someone has gone ahead and done this. So I am un-backburnering my own project, since it has definitively been proven to be possible! https://forum.makerforums.info/t/building-the-first-electro-mechanical-pedal-steel-guitar/84597/118 He has more...

I did a proper upgrade. Drill holes in the side of the pedals (gave myself a couple of different options for different amounts of pedal travel) drilled holes in the bottoms of the changer arms and put in #8 eyebolts, and attached them to 1/8" threaded rod with one of these: https://www.mcmaster...

What is your copedent? I like mine for the same reason: virtually every combination of pedals gives a usable strum across the whole instrument. Definitely opens up some different playing methods!

I used a trombone case for my supro for years. $20 on craigslist. Unfortunately, my oahu is about a 1/2 inch too long to fit. But it still might be an option....

The link to the website is broken, and looks like the business is for sale...and no place to put any text on the 'contact' popup.

Any kits left in stock? I'd love to get a 26" stringmaster...

What's the scale length on this one?

Both. Charting a 1-4-5 tune in Gb will sure make you tired of writing out flats. But do a tune where the bridge modulates to the flat 3, and you might wish you didn't use numbers.... and of course if the vocalist is going to change their mind three times about the key, numbers are better. Just depen...

In my experience as a bass player, it is much easier to play upright bass than electric bass, without looking at my hands. Frets help you stay in tune, right up until the point you end up a fret off, and get a wrong note or a nasty buzz. A fretless instrument keeps you aware of your tuning all the t...

Yeah, closed loop for sure. I'm trying to tune the PID right now. The problem is not speed, it's accuracy. If you don't land close enough to pitch on your first try, then it's a slow process adjusting--the motor needs most of its power to move the pitch, and once it does, it goes too far too fast! S...

oh hi Benjamin. Just saw your project elsewhere on the forum, and sent you an email. Did some tests today on what this motor can handle. At 20 lbs of string tension, it can do a semitone in 30 ms. At 23 lbs of tension it takes 100 ms. So big difference there. Adjusting the compensating spring could ...

might be useful, I'll keep it in mind, thanks! I'm aiming for 20ms for a semitone, but I think I'll need the more powerful motor to do that. It will also depend on how much string tension there is. A tighter string slows down the motor... A lot of unknowns still. Right now, I'm trying to decode the ...

got a prototype 1-string setup working... https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/userpix2020-03/15563_1stringTest_1.jpg This is not the most powerful motor I can buy in this size, but it is (barely) capable of bringing the string up to 23 lbs of tension, which is the tension of the high string on an E9. Th...

To speak to that, I've played pedal steel for a number of years in a Joni Mitchell cover band, using a copedent I designed for her music. It's worked really well. I don't think you could get a lot of those chords with an E9 tuning, but they sound really gorgeous on steel... I got introduced to pedal...

Well, if you want to follow my progress, (and chime in!) come on over to: https://forum.makerforums.info/t/building-the-first-electro-mechanical-pedal-steel-guitar/84597/33 And watch the drama play out in excruciating detail. There's about six yards of discussion already. I've made a super-basic tes...

Okay, there's some more acronyms, and another technology to go read up on!

Found this kind of stuff on Amazon, eventually:

https://www.amazon.com/Metal-Reduction- ... ef=sr_1_49

Looks like you could also use a hall effect sensor instead of an optical sensor: https://www.instructables.com/Hall-Effect-Sensors-1-Position-Control/ Don't know if the precision is sufficient. Still trying to figure that out. There's also linear inductions sensors. Still looking into those. And the...

well at $490 each, the encoders linked are going to add up fast ;) Wondering if something like this would work: https://www.amazon.com/Willwin-Measuring-Comparator-Optocoupler-Arduino/dp/B0776RHKB1/ref=pd_sbs_4/142-2343737-9752005 My first thought is whether it would have trouble knowing which direc...

Thanks for the link!

I had another thought. Wondering about using a hall effect sensor to measure the absolute position of the changer finger.

Thoughts? I'm going to look into the precision of them, but the idea of an absolute rather than relative measurement is appealing.

Acme screws would be right, thanks Ian. According to the web, Acme screws are just a particular subset of lead screws... I found this for a lead screw. https://www.amazon.com/ReliaBot-100mm-Tr5x2-Printer-Machine/dp/B081VN8QRM/ref=sr_1_29 Most cheap chinese ones on Amazon are t8, which is going to b...

Well, if I could buy the steel I want, I would. Otherwise, I have to make something. I made my own keyboard, for instance. A long process that's taken 15 years or so to get to where it is, and still evolving. It's not particularly marketable. But it does what no other keyboard does, and it keeps me ...

A screw drive – as I have mentioned earlier, works same as a screw jack for cars but in miniature. Basically it is a screw/nut-in-a-tube arrangement that takes the place of a pull-rod, and it does not need power to stay in place in neutral position or anywhere else along the travel. - A screw drive...

The use of midi with pedal steel is complicated by the lack of midi support for instruments that have more than 6 strings. The industry leader in analog to midi implementation, Roland, has excellent products that convert analog pitch to midi via segregated pickups but their interface to the midi co...

thanks, already great insights here. Thanks for the links. Good point about the G# string also. I'm expecting to need a pretty strong spring to counter balance the string tension, as well as a way to adjust the spring... pretty clear there will be a lot to experiment with. I haven't been able to fin...

Here's a quick mockup of the kind of thing I'm thinking of...


changer fingers shown in full raise position...

Sorry to unearth this zombie thread, but I wanted to reference the info above... Since I moved a bit too slow, and just missed out on the PS210 for sale last week (I have a hard time bringing myself to spend money...) I am back to looking at options for experimenting with copedants. I found these fa...