The Steel Guitar Forum

Bill, if you had not have told us, I would have sworn you were playing an older Remington D10. I have one and can get the pedal steel sound out of it with no problem at all. As you say, the volume pedal, tuning and using proper bars slants is/are the secret/s. It also helps to have a long scale neck to give it that mellow tone.

Great sound all around Bill, great work.

Thanks Les.

Another thing you need to do to get some pedal sounds on the lap is to pick good keys to play in. Pick a key for the song that gives you as many open strings as possible to work with the melody and chords. That will give you some sustained notes to play under.

This song was done on a 10 string E9 non pedal with an E-66 pickup. Not only does the guitar have a pedal steel like sound but the E9 tuning gives you easy access to some commonly used pedal steel chords with minimal slants needed.


http://www.mediafire.com/?ewmm0yhwcm2

Dennis Burling wrote:... How do you do right hand palm block/mute and still use the levers?...

You can't. The levers get in the way. Palm levers are never going to replace pedals, and they have their limitations; for instance, a lever will only pull or push one string; but they do allow you to do things you couldn't do without them. For instance, I have no difficulty picking and pushing the levers simultaneously. Unlike a tremolo unit you rest your palm on it: you don't ever hold the levers. When I get a chance I'll record a number using the levers and then the same number without using the levers, and you'll be able to hear the difference. I'd never put levers on a lap steel before, so I chose to use four levers. In retrospect, three would have been plenty. I tend to move the two outside levers out of the way most of the time.