The Steel Guitar Forum

Lane Gray wrote:I'm not a metalworking whiz. I'd take a good finger and the broken finger to a machine shop and say "make this one look like the other one, and that pin will have to restrain 30 pounds of tension for many years."
I believe they're steel spring pins, but I know nothing about how to make them.

Can do.
I'll do some research and find a good machinist.
Al Brisco is also quite close to me where I live in Toronto, he must have some decent contacts if I'm in a pinch.

Thanks Lane.

Here's my 1971 Marlen. I've no way to confirm if it's a laquer finish...appears to be oil base paint. My undercarriage is identical, except the one knee lever I have is in great shape.
These things sing once they're setup and tuned. Hang on to them pickups they are tone sweet!

Nice one Edward.
Thanks for this. Adding more clarity to the Marlen picture for me.
I plan to keep the stock pickups...all I hear is how good these steels sound.
Love how these Marlen's seem to have character.

Tim, my Marlen was of a later vintage, so I can't help you much on the cross shaft issue, other than this, it looks like the shafts are cut a little short, so that you insert it deep into one side, the pull it back a little into the other side. It looks like the stop collars on the ends of the shaft are what keep it "centered". The shaft can be made from some round stock, and the stop collars can be ordered.

I can tell you this, one big help to update the workings would be to do like some else suggested and put all new 1/8" rods in it. You can go to a welding shop and buy 3 foot stainless rods reasonably cheap. Then, work one rod at a time, marking the old rod with a sharpie, remove it and transfer the marks to a new rod, and put it in.

I agree with Lane on the string pin. Take the changer out, and take the one needing fixed along with a good one to a machine shop. You can also clean the changer during that time. BE SURE to lay it out like you take it apart, so you get it back together right. As far as oil, get some light sewing machine oil (or similar, I use lock oil) and use it SPARINGLY.

You may have to get creative on the knee levers. Might have to use parts from a different brand. Or even have the machine shop make them.

Good luck with it, and keep us posted!

When you replace the pull rods, try smaller than 1/8 like Bob C. mentioned. I used 3/32 stainless Tig welding filler rods in mine. They are cheap at welding supply stores, and the smaller rods work smoother, as Bob said. Probably not an issue in the later all pull Marlens like Scott's, but it makes a difference in the pull-release. Sometimes a little less precision can be a good thing.

Micheal Yahl (hope I spelled that right) has Marlen knee lever on his psgparts site.

I wish you luck on this. It will be an interesting, fun and rewarding project. I hope you get lots of use out of this. It should sound pretty sweet. (Actually, it wouldn't bother me if you get so frustrated that you pull all your hair out, and decide to sell it to me, at a loss, next trip down to Tn!) Seriously, any old pull release or push pull can be a challenge to get set up right. You'll learn a lot in the process, and after you're done, you'll never ever have to do anything but change strings every now and then. It will be solid as a rock from then on. You'll be glad you took the time to do it right.

Here is the LKL lever.

Looks like Len. Simple as hell, but exactly what the job needs. A lot of elbow grease and Meguiar's Cleaner Wax

Just FYI, my Marlen D10W was a pull / release.

See http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=245342.

Beautiful steel Scott...
and plenty of good info as well.
Thanks for sharing.

Scott is correct about the collars on the crosshafts. There is a derlin(?) bushing that goes into the holes drilled into the aprons to lubricate/center the shafts axis. Those and the collars can be found McMaster-Carr, I believe? There's no reason to lubricate the bushing, it'll make the wooden hole swell over time and make your guitar pedal hard.
Mine was a total bear to pedal when I first got it...all the oil and cleaners in the world wouldn't help it!
Feel free to contact me if you should have questions about your Marlen. I'm NOT by any means an expert on them, just a fan who is also restoring one.

Thanks Edward, great tips.
I repair regular guitars and, yes, oil can be quite evil.
I'll give you a shout, for sure.
All the best.

I wish you luck with your purchase. I have an earlier one, and can't say much good about it...except that it looked nice. The 5/16" cross-shafts (with no center support) and the el-cheapo bushings meant that precise tuning was difficult. The pedal-stop plate was a piece of .032" sheet metal screwed onto a wood strip, and that didn't help matters. The skinny knee levers bent and wore, and then flopped all around, and mine has parts (like the end plates) that were clearly hacksawed and filed. (Apparently, Leonard wasn't very good at machine work in the early years.)

If you like the sound of these old guitars, and have considerable skills, they can be rebuilt and made to play acceptably, but I would never recommend them for a beginner. The later '70s and '80s models were much improved, but the brand still never achieved any popularity with the pro players.

Thanks for your candor Donny.
I understand all the things you've mentioned and I'll be sure to address any perceived "weakness" as I work on this steel.
It may not be a first choice for most steel players but I'll get it to where I can make music with it.
That's really all it needs to do.
T

One thing that I have noticed on my Marlen, which is an early model, is that the pull-rods are threaded at the changer end, and two nuts are used on each pull-rod (to lock together when they are in the right position).

Later models use a collar, which is a lot trickier to set correctly during setup.

Maybe Marlen went downt the collar route because it was a cheaper option than threading the rod, but the two locknuts make the setup much easier to do, eg timing the 5th and 10 fingers so that they both 'bottom out' on the body simultaneously when the 'A' pedal is pressed

The guy in VA is Mike Callaway in Salem. Don't have his #.

That's interesting Richard. In all the times I've seen pictures of your steel,I never noticed the nuts. Most of the rods on my oldest Marlen were threaded too, but they had collars on them. I had assumed the rods had come off a steel with nylon tuners. They were rusty, and tended to bind, so I replaced them. Maybe they were original, and once had nuts like yours?

Thanks Richard, Mule & Bobby.
More good info.

Perhaps he started by emulating the Perm. The nuts is how Shot did it.

The old pull-release Marlens are amazing machines, but they require careful setting up as far as spring-tensions, pedal and lever travel, lever return-springs etc are concerned. The tuning is intuitive once you understand how the pull-release system works.

I took a Marlen pull release which had rods which were just a tad crowded, like this:-


and managed to turn it into this:-




with all the rods essentially parallel, none binding and all the pulls as straight as possible.


It took quite a bit of work making double-sided bellcranks, threading pull-rods, making stop-collars and rod-clamps, engineering a reversing-mechanism for the E-lowers, but the end result was well worth it.

Richard Burton is inspiring with his engineering and diagrams. Check some of his Youtube playing on his Marlen to get an idea of just how good these old steels can sound.

Great job Ned! I sent you a message.

Tim Mech wrote:Thanks for your candor Donny.
I understand all the things you've mentioned and I'll be sure to address any perceived "weakness" as I work on this steel.
It may not be a first choice for most steel players but I'll get it to where I can make music with it.
That's really all it needs to do.
T

Tim, I understand completely, and meant no insult. I play a Fender 400 from time to time, and it's far from perfect, too! I think it makes nice music, and it helps my playing, but most steelers today just laugh at anything without knee levers. Most all of us eventually wind up playing whatever we like, but there are some guitars (like the old Fenders and Marlens) that I feel probably aren't good choices for beginners - and sometimes for different reasons.

Ned, that's positively pornographic.

Donny, I get what you're saying.
I need to start somewhere and this steel made a timely appearance.
Everything happens for a reason.
I'll roll with the punches.
Thanks for giving your opinion, seriously.