Question About First Time Re-Stringing My Excel

[Eric Long]

Hello!

I'm about a month and a half into playing steel guitar and I'm in love. In early November I picked up an Excel S12 from here on the forum that is tuned to extended E9. I've been going deep and clocking my hours with the Franklin e9th basics course and am really happy with my progress and the level of instruction there.

Last night I was playing around with my 1st string F# knee raise and I broke my first string.

I'm hoping to dive in today to get it all restrung. I'm a little intimidated but it doesn't look too bad. I have some singles and two packs of Ernie Ball Nickel Wound Steel strings.

I have read through the excel instructions but my guitar is a little different which can be found here:

https://www.fuzzypsg.com/int/product.html

Before jumping in I had a question and also wondered if anyone had any advice on stringing up an excel. I'm including pics.

On the changer side you'll notice that there seems to be 4 little hex pieces missing. Am I onto something here or is this not a big deal? I've highlighted them in the pics.

What do the top and bottom hex inserts do on my steel?

Thanks all, and Happy Holidays.

[Greg Cutshaw]

My excel 12 string changer is a bit different than yours. It appears that the bottom hex inserts on yours lock the string into position and that the upper screws perform an additional lock if needed for the smaller gauge strings.

My Excel is shown here and I've seen lots of little variations on the changer design:

http://www.gregcutshaw.com/Excel%2012%2 ... yless.html

[Eric Long]

Wow greg that's a great looking guitar. This seems to make sense to me! Two locking devices.


I'm glad you have all of those detailed pictures up. I've been trying to learn the mechanics bit by bit and haven't much to compare to. This seems to make sense to me!

[Eric Long]

On my guitar there doesn't seem to be any pegs (gold on yours) for the string to wrap around. Just a whole and those allen slots to tighten down.

[Greg Cutshaw]

Excel has some great ideas! Here's an 8 string lap steel with multiple lock levers:

[fraser]

Here's another thread on the same topic and may have some useful info for you.

Thanks
Fraser

https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtop ... ht=keyless

[Mike Vallandigham]

Pretty much what Greg said. The larger strings are sufficiently locked with the headless grub screw.

You can always go to the hardware store ad get 4 more for piece of mind. They're metric, of course.

It's not a bad idea to wrap the string tail back up and lock it under the cap screw, like is done on higher strings.

Be sure to pre-stretch that string before you try to install it, or you might run out of room on the tuner. Also be sure to hold the finger back all the way while locking the grub screw or else you'll have to take up all that slack with the tuner, which you can't do.

You need three hands with this style, which I also have on my older one.

You have to pull the string tight with one hand (I use a wooden handle to get a good grip) pull the finger back with another hand, and with a third hand, or your mouth ( I use my mouth) lock the grub screw. Put the wrench in there first, of course.

[Mike Vallandigham]

You can also devise a contraption to hold teh finger back ( a wedge or a hook or something) so you only need two hands to do it.

It seems convoluted, but it's not bad once you know the tricks.

That's the price we pay for being cool?