Fender 400-8 Tuning

[Greg Youngman]

Please be easy on me. I just acquired a 1967 Fender 400 8 string, 6 pedal from Chuck Foreman's estate. If it was yours, would you stick with the A6 tuning in the book (E,C#,A,F#,E,C#,A,F#) or something else? Plus, what pedal arrangement might you start with?

Thanks

[Earnest Bovine]

would you stick with the E9 tuning in the book (E,C#,A,F#,E,C#,A,F#) or something else?

That's an A6 tuning.
Check out the E9 tunings posted on the Forum. I would suggest copying the common 10 string tuning, an omitting the first 2 strings F# and D#. Instead of the knee levers you see there, you can use your right foot on pedal 4,5,6.
It' so quick and easy to change the pedal functions on those Fenders.

[Greg Youngman]

Earnest. Yes... I was thinking A6 and typed E9. Thanks for the E9 suggestions. I'll give that a try. The pedal function changes do look easy and could provide some interesting options.

Ulric. I wasn't aware that Fender had a good steel forum. Thanks.

[Joel Meredith]

http://z8.invisionfree.com/Fender_Steel ... index.php?

Fender Steel forum
Sneaky's B6 works out well on these Fenders as well, which is what I play.

[Ryan Barwin]

If you want to use E9th, something like this would work pretty well...




I'd use a C6th setup...something like this...



Of course one of the cool things about those old Fenders is you can change the whole pedal setup in about 10 minutes, which you can't do with most guitars. So it's easy to experiment a lot with it.

[Greg Youngman]

Joel: Thanks for the link.

Ryan: That chart looks great. Now that I've studied a few of these, yours is making great sense. TNX.

I just changed the stings and got it tuned. I see I need to do a bit of cleaning (probably should have done that before the strings) and the pedals will be next. I can't figure out how he had them setup, but it doesn't matter. They were out of whack.

I appreciate the time you all took to respond to my post.

[Danny Bates]

Greg, If you ever come up this way, let's hook up. It's been too long my friend.

Not trying to blow smoke but Greg is one of those guys that is naturally talented. He could sing, play guitar, piano and bass (and operate a recording studio) when he was just 15 years old. I'm talking about a guy that has Paul McCartney caliber talent... He's unreal!

We better do all we can to keep a steel guitar away from him.

Motton E. Few lives (inside joke)

[Greg Youngman]

Hey Dan!

Thanks for the smoke. You've got the talent too. Why do you think I hooked up with you back then? You knew all the augmented, suspended, diminished chords. I didn't have a clue and sometimes still don't.

I revisit those old master tapes from the late sixties. We wrote some really good songs.

Didn't Motton E. Few evolve from another band name idea we had... Motley Crew (roughly-organized assembly of characters)? They didn't even get it until 1981! God, we were ahead of our time! Email me.

[Greg Youngman]

I'm tracking my first pedal overdubs today. This isn't as easy as some of you guys make it look.