Handicap Playing With An Artifical Knee

Ron Patrick · Post by **Ron Patrick** » 24 Jul 2008 6:12 pm

I had a knee replacement six years ago on my left knee . I just recently began learning to play the steel and are now on the pedals .I have found out that when I set the guitar in position where I can work the pedals without strain on the knee, my knee is too far away to work the levers on the left side of the guitar .I'm not on levers yet but when it comes I got a problem.
Has any of you steel players had this problem and if so are there a solution ? I was thinking of drilling the lever and adding another lever running horizontal along side of the knee .Have you ever seen anything like this ? Thanks RON

Carl Vilar · Post by **Carl Vilar** » 24 Jul 2008 6:26 pm

Ron I have seen that done on a few steels and it works. If your having a real hard time check out GFI pedal steel's homepage I see he makes custom guitars for people with different handicaps. On one steel he even has wrist levers on it.

Michael Johnstone · Post by **Michael Johnstone** » 24 Jul 2008 7:21 pm

I wish all I had to contend with was a knee replacement.I shattered my left tibia from the plateau down the tibia about 6 inches into around 50 fragments in a hang glider accident in 1974 and have had several reconstructive surgeries on it.While it's not a full knee replacement,there's a lot of metal plates and screws in there - some right under the skin. The shape and angles of that knee are pretty distorted away from the norm and there are limits to how far I can bend it. For a number of years after the accident,I was extremely bowlegged on that leg so I just made knee levers to conform to the shape of my leg. Later,when the leg was re-broken and re-set straight in 1994,it was around the same time I decided to go from a D-10 to a U-12 and I had to re-design and reposition the levers anyhow on my new Seirra 12 string.

I put custom flags on some of the levers and had a vertical wrist lever to take some pressure of my left knee.Even then I would often catch a subcutanious screw or plate on the edge of a lever and split open the skin on the side of my knee and that was too freaky and took forever to heal up so I started putting 1/16" neoprene rubber on the flags as a cushion - especially LKL. I currently have 6 levers on that knee on my Excel(2 each way and 2 verts)and I can get to them all. Ya just gotta want to do it. Where there's a will there's a way. You should be able to get 90 degrees out of that knee by now and that's all you need.If you still can't,don't be a wimp - it's achievable thru physical therapy.

Richard Damron · Post by **Richard Damron** » 25 Jul 2008 8:41 am

Ron -

Please see my response to this subject in your other post.

Respectfully,

Richard

Lee Wilber · Post by **Lee Wilber** » 25 Jul 2008 12:59 pm

ron---- i have had total knee replacement 4 times.(twice in 1991 and twice again in 2004. if you work hard during rehab. you should have no problem geting that 110 degree bend in your leg(s) and easily get under your steel. lots of luck---- lee