Blankenship PSG History & Restoration

[Andy DePaule]

I bought a really nice sounding Blankenship D-8 that I am starting to get back to full function.
Have not been able to find out much in the way of facts about this builder and his steels. This was built in Amarillo, Texas.
The one I got is serial #00005 so I'm guessing it is the 5th and he intended to make a lot of them???? Looks to be mid 50's in the style of build. If thats right it is also a little ahead of it's time with square cross shafts and bell cranks to pull the cables directly from the changer fingers. Also looks like the knee lever was a later addition by the same builder.
Has very nice birdseye maple, Finish is okay, but not very smooth application. Looks like it was brushed on and not sanded level or buffed.
Any good information is a help.

I'll post updates as I work on the steel to get it to where I'd like it to be, Restored as best as possible and very playable.
Thanks,
Andy

[Andy DePaule]

Well I did receive a PM from a forum member who once owned a Blankenship & Wheeler T-8. He is very much in the know and knew Lewis Junior Blankenship until his passing about ten years ago.
Gave me loads of information and help in my project, but if anyone else knows any more I'd like to hear from them too.

Have gotten the steel set up and adjusted now. Sounds great and plays very well though I'll be doing more to set it up the way I like and will post the progress here as I go.
Need to replace the pulling cables (Bicycle shop stuff) and some other changes so that I can put the copedents on it that I want.
Right now pedals 1, 2, 3 & 4 work on the back A6th neck. and Pedals 5, 6 and the knee lever work on the front E9th neck.
I think that many older 1950's steels had the pedals set that way, but I don't like it so will change that as soon as I have all the parts I need... The knee lever which looks like a later addition* does not work well and I'd prefer to have two levers so have ordered replacements.
The pedals have a nice solid touch with short travel and easy action.
*The lever looks to be very similar to the other parts of the system so my guess is that Junior added that for someone later on.
Andy

[Andy DePaule]

So one of the first things was to get neck selector switches to replace the missing ones. Right now the pickups are wired directly to the output jack.
They sound very good.

Todd was kind enough to give me a couple of the switches he had. As you can see they were missing the push buttons;



I didn't have access to a lath so used a drill press to make these buttons.
First cut them to the length needed to clear the 3/4" deck they are in.
Next drilled out a center hole in the 1/2" aluminum rod stock to accommodate the switch with a snug but not too tight fit.
Then mounted them in the drill press and shaped the ends to a nice soft round over using a file. Sanded and then polished with Mothers Mag and Aluminum polish available at Walmart. Great for polishing those kind of parts and not expensive.
I only polished the parts that will show above the wood.



You may have noticed that one hole in the top of the steel between the necks was larger than the other and I'm not sure why? Maybe someone drilled one out in the past for reasons I can't guess.



I'd have preferred to use 3/8" rod stock but then one would look loose so I made them this 1/2" size and will drill out the holes a little larger when I mount them so they will at least look the same.

[Andy DePaule]

When I first set up the steel the pedal bar leg clamps were not very snug and the pedal bar was slipping up and down on the legs. The steel was also very wobbly and would have been hard to play. The leg clamps are heavy strong chrome plated steel.

To resolve this I went to a local hardware shop and got some 1/16" plumbers rubber sheet. Cut 4 small sections to 1" X 1.75" and attached some 3M double stick tape to the inside surfaces of the rubber and stuck those on the inside of the pedal bar clamping device at each end of the pedal bar.





This made the pedal bar very firm on the legs and also got the steel guitar to be very stable... No more wobble!
You can see in the photo that I'll also need to remove and polish the pedals and their holding parts later.
This steel does not need a lot done. Mostly small stuff, but it will add up to a lot of time cleaning, polishing and making adjustments as well as making some new parts and replacing some other parts. Will be well worth the effort.

[Jim Cohen]

Looks like you're gonna have a lovely axe when it's all done and ready. Beautiful birdseye! Enjoy the process.

[David Weisenthal]

Nifty looking guitar Andy..looks well made. The toe region on the pedals looks very short by todays standard, or is that the angle of the photo. Those pickups have a wide blade, did Blankenship make those as well?

[Andy DePaule]

Hi Jim,
Yes very nice birds eye with a strong tiger striped look on the sides.
Gonna get it up to snuff very soon.
Best wishes,
Andy

[Andy DePaule]

Nifty looking guitar Andy..looks well made. The toe region on the pedals looks very short by todays standard, or is that the angle of the photo. Those pickups have a wide blade, did Blankenship make those as well?

Yes (Name withheld by request) knew Junior Blankenship and he also had a nice T-8 Blankenship & Wheeler that was built at an earlier time. It had identical pickups. They have nice tone. He has given me lots of information and knows his stuff.

My steel is missing the tone and volume control so I'll need to replace those and find some nice 50's knobs that will have the right look.

It is the angle of the photos....
The pedals are comfortable to play. Very easy action. I would like to work on the angle to get them closer to the floor. More of a 30º angle.

Right now it's set up with the front E9th neck on pedals 5&6 and the knee lever.
That is very awkward to play so I intend to move them to the first three pedals and the last 3 pedals on the back A6th neck. Need to replace the cables to get that done. They look to be wire cables from a bike with a small crimping device on the ends.
The knee lever slips a lot so I plan to replace it and also add one more to get most of the E9th stuff used today.



I'd really like to have some simple way to have both raises and a half tone lower on my E9th 4th string E, but not sure if that would be possible on a pull release like this?
If anyone reading this knows of a way please do chime in.

[Brett Lanier]

I'm rebuilding a steel right now that I bought thinking was a custom made Bobbe Seymour/Sho-Bud permanent. When I took the necks off though one had "Made by Blankenship 1966" written underneath. It looks a lot like your's, only with more of a Sho-Bud permanent look and design. Also has the raised graphic aluminum fretboards, but with the Sho-Bud card symbols.

[Andy DePaule]

Hi Brett,
Thanks for your post.
I'm certainly no expert on Lewis Junior Blankenship and still trying to learn all I can about him and all the other early builders too.
What you said did not surprise me because I've been told and also read things here on the forum* about him doing work on other makers steel guitars.

*Not everything here on the forum is accurate, but it's still the best place to try to track down some of the history because there are so few other places.

I understand it was not unusual for them all to make changes to other builders steels and guitars.

Paul Bigsby replaced lots of guitar necks with his own as well as some other instrument.
I've read somewhere that Chuck Wright put pedals or added pedals to some Bigsby's and other things like that.

I wonder if you have some photos you could post of your Sho-Bud with neck & fretboard Made by Blankenship 1966... I'd love to see that and also put it in my Blankenship Files as well as my Sho Bud Files.
Bobbe Seymour was kind of known for doing loads of strange things to steel guitars. Some good and some not so much!
Best wishes,
Andy

[Andy DePaule]

I don't think Bobbe Seymour ever cast fretboards at all, with or without raised graphics, but as I said, I'm no expert.
Maybe someone would chime in if they know better?

[Andy DePaule]

About the High E9th tuning & String breakage.

I wanted to use E9th on the front neck and A6th on the back neck.
One serious issue with the high E9th (#0.011P G# string pulling to A) on these early pedal steels was string breakage caused by the higher note strings stretching over the sharp 90º edge of the nut before the use of roller nuts in the early 60’s.

I was afraid this may cause me to have to go to a D9th with lower tension as many steelers had done in the 50’s.
Decided that I’d first try the E9th with the high G# to A pull and if that failed I’d go to a D9th or even machine the nut to accept the two sets of roller nuts I had in case nothing else worked.
The drawback of the roller nuts being I wanted to keep the steel as close to original as possible.

As luck would have it I put on an E9th set of strings and have been playing in that tuning for over two weeks now without any breakage. Why is that with the extra long 25” scale?

On closer examination of the nut I found a very smart design in that the leading edge had an almost impossible to see rounded edge a little less than a 1/16” from the 90º drop off so the strings were not leaving the nut at a sharp edge, but at a soft angle. Looking at the close up photos you can see a very tiny almost invisible space between the strings and the nut there.
The drop off is so thin a business card will not fit in, but a thin sheet of paper will go in about 1/64” inch. Not enough to notice, but enough to do the trick. Very smart thinking on Juniors part.



The other good design feature is the string guide grooves that are below the top surface and also have soft edges so that there are no sharp parts rubbing the strings as they stretch to pull the notes up a whole or half tone.
Another surprise is that the tuned strings seem to return very well to the right note (Or very close to it) after being raised or lowered.



There is one more reason for the lack of breakage. That is the tuning I am using from top down; (F# C# G# E B G# F# E) Usually on these old steels they had the Bud Isaacs tuning (E B G# F#....) at first without the two diatonic strings and no high G# coming off the 1st string at a steep angle from the nut to the tuner there was less chance of breakage. Adding the high G# to A pull at the 1st string came later and with it breaking strings.
With my more modern tuning the high G# is the 3rd string where the angle from the nut to the tuner is quite mild and not the extreme it would be if it were to be the 1st string. Is this all getting too detailed?

Enough of that, Next will be some information about the tunings and copedent I will want to use. But that will be after I attend to some other business today.
Thanks for your interest,
Andy

[Brett Lanier]

Hi Andy, happy to share pictures. The first picture is of when I got it and set it up. It wasn't really playable, though it was easy to tell how resonant the thing is just by striking one of the old strings that was still on it. The finish was all cracked and completely missing in some places (like the front apron).

The bottom three pictures I took last night (just started reassembling). A month or two ago I cleaned everything and did an amber shellac finish on the wood. I thought I was going to do a nitro spray but ended up using store bought, tinted, shellac (!).

Hoping to have it done by early October so I can see if I like it enough to take it on the road with me. If I can't get it done by then though it will likely get pushed back til after the new year.

[Brett Lanier]

ps, I think the pickups are early Danny Shields. I haven't tested them yet but they appear to be very low impedance. I'm excited to hear what they sound like.

[Andy DePaule]

Thanks Brett,

Looks like it has the same changer fingers as mine. The block they are in looks more like some Sho-Buds... Who Knows?
I'd love to see that closer up. Is it a single raise or lower changer? Cable pulls?

Also the same end plates. but with a maple back skirt where mine has none.
The parts that hold the pedals look the same but the pedals are not the same.

Yes mine is also low impedance, though I've not yet tested them.
I think most of the early steels had similar pickups but a little surprised they were still low by 1966? There again, I'm no expert and just a guy learning.

Your right that aside from the card symbols the raised graphic fretboards do look like mine except that mine has the nuts as part of the fretboard, not attached separately.

If you have time I'd love to see more of it, The underside and closer photos of the keyhead and nuts.

All in all the similarities to mine are quite a few.
Thanks so much for the post.
Best wishes,
Andy

[Brett Lanier]

That's interesting about the nut and fretboard. Pretty cool.






i like that the pull rods are all pretty straight. I'm going to try to put 5 knee levers in (4 for E9, 1 extra LKL for C6). Most Permanents I've seen, and my Marlen, have swivels which take up a lot of room and cause rods to go at an angle. I probably don't have to explain this to most people reading this - but by providing spring tension inline with the rod that is releasing the finger, you can keep everything straight. It improves the way it plays and leaves room for more stuff.

The brass spring loaded tuners are really cool. There is one for the 9th string lower and 10th, on the C6th neck. I don't really need volume and tone controls on the guitar, so I'm thinking about having those two extra holes in the endplate be a jack for a TRS cable and an expression control knob.

[Brett Lanier]

Oh yeah I forgot, there are three swivels on this guitar. Which may need to go...

[Andy DePaule]

I may be wrong, but I think that the Sho-Bud Permanents all had the Gumby peghead and they had no roller nuts until the Fingertip model?

Brett, Your steel has not got a Gumby key head, but it does have roller nuts that look a lot more advanced than those on the Fingertips that came later.
I could be wrong because the photo is not a close up.

I'm leaning toward thinking that (Name Withheld) is right about your steel being built by Lewis Junior Blankenship or at the very least having many of his parts.
To me that makes it have more value as a vary rare instrument.

See this photo of a Permanent keyhead on the left and a Fingertip on the right.
In fact the fingertip in this photo seems to have used string balls for the rollers... Not very high tech at all, but very very Sho Bud!....

[Brett Lanier]

I've seen rollers on Permanents before, and from what I've been told Sho-Bud continued making Permanents for a few years even after the Fingertip model was made.

I wasn't able to find that forum discussion about my guitar, but there's a lot in there from Bobbe Seymour (true or not), including about the gumby keyheads being ground down to make a shorter body guitar. The thread was called "Is this a Permanent?". It was started by Stan Schober, and dated Sept 13, 2009. Maybe someone can find it. The download link I sent you does work but I had to disable a security feature on my computer because of the nature of it being internet content.

I'm not sure who made, or finished making my guitar and I'm ok with it being a mystery. The fact that there is no sign of an L.T. Blankenship badge or engraving, and that he signed the neck in pencil makes me think maybe he was hired to build the cabinet (and probably also the fretboards), but could have been finished by Bobbe (RKS). It would be interesting to see another Blankenship guitar from the mid 60's to see if there are any similarities with the undercarriage.

[Brett Lanier]

Here's that keyhead shot. The old Grover tuners are very cool.

[Andy DePaule]

Bell Crank Issue;
When I first tried to adjust the cables one of the bell cranks broke. Ouch!
They are about the only really week part that was designed here but I needed a replacement to fit the 3/8” square cross shaft.




Chuck Back (Desert Rose) gave me more than enough Bell cranks he made with 3/8” opening for the 3/8” square cross shafts on the Blankenship. Each bell crank has 9 holes to pick from so should help getting very smooth balanced pulls.

Chucks fine bell crank;



Interesting to compare the old and the new;


I’ve done photos of the set up now with the old bell cranks which I will save and not toss out those parts that Junior Blankenship made because it would be a shame to loose original parts.
However they have round holes on a square shaft and an allan screw to hold them in place??? The circle around the shaft is only about 1/16” thick so a week link in an otherwise good design.
I think when I get a case made for this I will keep all those parts together in the case.

Chuck is such a nice guy to just give me those, more than I’ll even need, so I will make some pearl and abalone logos for him soon to use on his fine steels.

[Andy DePaule]

For the change in tuning and which pedals do which neck I’ll need to change the cables around.
The old cables were working alright for the most part. However since I will change the bell cranks I may as well go ahead and replace all the cables with nice new ones to last another 50 years or so.

You can see in the photos how the older ones don’t match the newer ones and all are a little loose and frayed on the ends;





*The steel now has one cable pulling directly and the other taking up slack with a spring on the other finger during double pulls. The splitter will allow me to do away with the spring for the more solid duel pulls.

Lucky that I live here in Asia where these things are far less expensive than in the west. I went to a bike shop 10 minutes from my house where I bought 24 cables as well as 6 splitting devices for the double pulls* All of that came in under $5.00 and when I looked on Amazon the cables alone would have been $29.00 plus shipping.
The new cables and splitters;


This should make for a much nicer clean looking system under the steel when I get done. The cables are each about the length of the steel so I should have more than I need. Will sure be less slack in the cables though a little slack is desirable in this kind of system.
Will post some more as I move along through this project. Hope I don't mess it up!

[Brett Lanier]

I hope that one day someone makes a D10 with knee levers and a cable pull system. There's something about the feel of the cable system that is very nice, and gets you playing a bit differently.

[Daniel McKee]

Andy, thats a great looking guitar. Your doing great work bringing it back to life. Brett, I seem to remember reading some time ago (possibly in a Bobbe Seymour newsletter) that some company was working on a modern cable operated steel but I guess it just never came to be. I agree that would be interesting to see happen.

[Pete Burak]

Hi Andy, I hope you can come to the Portland Steel Jam Sept 9th! Please bring some of your cool Steels, like this one!