The Steel Guitar Forum

chris ivey wrote:has anyone tried mounting a motorcycle windshield on a carter starter?

No but I did mount a cheese grater & potato peeler on one.

Bill if it will help I have a Sho-Bud D-10 in good shape 8 & 4 Day I'll sell to you for $1400 plus shipping. You can then do what I suggested in my previous reply.

That sounds like a good deal Bo is offering.
In days before I retired and my budget disappeared I might have jumped at it.

I re-built a CS & it was over $1000.00 after I got er' dun',then I got rid of it.I made it into a semi-pro. by changing everything underneath including the finger stop,pull rods,bellcranks etc..I traded it to a friend & he traded it to another friend,I don't know where it is now,wish I did.

Thanks for the well wishes Bama. Unfortunately, I live in the Bay Area (hate it here), and fortunately don't really have to contend with the fires.

Can't we just cut Bill some slack on this, and the Carter Starter owners too. Who cares if you don't like the Starter. Some do and you are insulting their choice of a guitar.

Alan,

I wouldn't attempt to make changes in a perfunctory manner. For starters, I would work with quality aircraft cables in place of the clothing hanger wire. Anything good enough for Paul Bigsby, is good enough for me. The cross shaft material doesn't measure up to engage in the stress inflicted upon them with heavy footwear. 3 piece mini pillow blocks for quickly accessing any shaft. Moveable, and adjustable hardware throughout to overcome the excesses of dismantling unnecessary hardware to access trouble areas. Spring load the lowers properly. Stabilizing the instrument's pedal rack with attractive aluminum, and reworking the pedals, and legs to get the show on the road..

You're absolutely right, Bill. To me, one of its main failings is the pedal rack, which bends as you push the pedals. A new pedal rack and pedals would transform the instrument. I'd been thinking of reinforcing it with steel bracing.

Richard Sinkler wrote:...I live in the Bay Area (hate it here), and fortunately don't really have to contend with the fires...

Me too. I was evacuated in the Oakland/Berkeley firestorm a few years back while our area burned, and was lucky that it missed my house by a few yards. I don't want to go through that again. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area who realisea that it's not the greatest place to live. I may yet move back to Birmingham, England... no earthquakes or firestorms there, and a proper health care system.

Alan,

A good buddy, Leigh Howell, who was a congenial host and country music singer, moved to Scotland quite some time ago. Since he left the Springfield, MA area, things have never been the same. He was one of the most helpful entertainers in this area before departing to distant lands. Steel guitarist, Doug Beaumier was a great favorite in Leigh's band back in the 80's, and beyond. They provided country music year after year. I think at one time you could be entertained every night of the week by their combined talents.

Frustrated over a student steel? The answer is a simple one. Turning LIABILITIES into ASSETS is one of my favorite things to do. Just when you are at the peak of frustration, oftentimes you will realize that with a special "twist" of the wrist, you will find great advantages in whatsoever has been the source of a problematic situation. With the prices soaring beyond affordability in most outlets nowadays, gaining ownership to a pedal steel guitar is becoming more difficult. The "CARTER STARTER" is a fine example that presents the LIABILITY into ASSETS theorem. Structurally, the "Carter" features the basics required to build from. The bottom line in this matter should read: Pulling the rug from under a liability.

In post-war England, where I grew up, you couldn't buy steel guitars of any sort. That's why I started building my own. After all, a lap steel is just a plank with strings and a pickup. During the 70s I decided to build a pedal steel in my parents' attic, but I had no access to a machine shop, so the pedals, and the mechanism, were made out of wood with some Meccano parts, As you can imagine, it never stayed in tune. It wasn't until after I had moved to California in 1980 that I acquired my first "store-bought" lap steel, and it wasn't until 2003 that I could afford to buy a pedal steel, and that was the Carter Starter which had just been introduced. So, even though I've been playing steel since 1962, it's only in recent years I've been able to afford pedals. I have to add that I bought my second pedal steel, a Sho-Bud Crossover, less than a year after the Carter. Now I have more pedal steels than I need.

Alan,

Have you ever imagined what all the steel guitars would look like if everyone who owns one or more brought their instruments to an open field that would accomodate the entire lot of those made; past and present?? What an imposing sight that would be to a passerby, who probably wouldn't have a clue as to what he was looking at! Actually, we are living in an age of ignorance for the most part, where the majority of humanity is unaware of the brilliance, and usefulness of the pedal steel guitar, while its workings are virtually unknown. The instrument could be likened to a foreign language, its usefulness is contained in certain bordered limitations. Many may get to the point of hearing a pedal steel guitar, but like the foreign language; it goes in one ear, and out the other. Enlarging upon the possibilities associated with words that beef up The "CARTER STARTER", is still in the back of my mind.

Bill, the public know so little about the music they listen to, or even what goes on in the world that they live in, that it's frightening. It not only extends to steel guitars, but to many other instruments, too. I also play the lute, which people seem to think is a wind instrument...

When I tell people I build citterns they think the cittern is an Indian instrument.

I thought it was an instrument that you sat on and it turned

Shucks did I get back here too late and every part on that Starter has been replaced, welded and a Franklin pedal added. How about changing the name from a Carter Starter to a Franklinstein.

Laugh if you must but a Frankenstein is a damn good guitar,albeit a bit dead sounding but...............

Bo Legg,

Thanks for the SHO-BUD offer. It was nice of you to offer an affordable steel. I'm not interested at this time. On the subject of the "CARTER" steel, all welded parts must be replaced with removeable units. Welding is for the birds.

I believe the steel guitar industry is ripe for harvesting. Most of the commonly known flaws in workmanship have been made known throughout the world, as well as on this forum. Subject matters are listing to the point of keeling over. Fresh planting of some new ideas would go over like a feather in the wind. With so very little to discuss, due to past coverages, some of the most knowledgeable writers are seldom heard from. I heard so much about the "CARTER STARTER" before having the opportunity to look inside to satisfy my own curiosity. And, now I know the rest of the story.

The next progress in pedal steel design should be one where you don't have to climb underneath or turn the machine upside-down to change the copedant. Ironically, the Harlin MultiKord did just that, but Harlin stopped working on it, and no-one else took up the challenge.

Alan,

From my standpoint, musical expression is becoming more of a hassle, like overzealous surgeons in some situations. And that includes specialists in other departments; as well. Drummers and bass players have all but taken over the total sound in new country bands. Maybe ROY ACUFF wasn't too far off the mark, as he went about dragging his feet on issues involving drums at the OPRY. His apparent premonitions are not to be ridiculed by my standards. Turning the radio on, and tuning into country music stations at this stage of the game is for naught! It's about 90 percent noise. You can forget all about listening for the steel guitar buried behind a heap of drums!

Maybe we're getting old, Bill, but Country Music ain't what it was. I, too, long for the old days of Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, and C6. Drums are okay in their place, but who needs distortion pedals, overdrive, etc. ? I cringe when I see Garth Brooks running around the lighting structures 20 ft. off the ground. You don't need gimmicks, just a good voice and a tune well put over. You don't even need a good voice, as long as you're honest: just look at Woody Guthrie. I'd rather have him than twenty of today's performers.

Alan,

It takes one paragraph or less here on the forum to establish that complaints more often than not fall upon deaf ears. Someone once commented, "If you can't say something good, say nothing at all!"

Tucker Jackson wrote:

According to Carter, the starter was made to the same specs on the body except for the set-up ala adjustable feet etc, 'Tone' should be just as good!

Sorry, I think there is a misconception here. As a student model, the Carter 'Starter' is a very different animal than the professional models. The wood appears to be the same type, but the body is narrower than the pro S-10. More importantly, the changer, undercarriage, neck, and pretty much every other part on the Starter is different too. Tone is good, but it's not a fair fight to compare it to the pro model. And why should it compare? New, they ran less than one-third the cost of Carter's pro S-10 model.

The Starter served that entry-level try-it-out-first market well enough, IMHO. Put in the pickup of your choice and it's very useable, especially if you beef up the pedal stops on the left-moving levers.

How does one beef up the pedal stops?

Kelly Weeks wrote: How does one beef up the pedal stops?

The main design flaw on the Carter Starter is the fact that the two knee levers that move to the left have inadequate stops. Fix those stops and the guitar serves its purpose very well for beginners, IMHO.

The knee lever stops when it hits the top of a very small, dome-shaped screw. The bracket that holds the knee lever is soft metal, so it can easily bend. If the lever is slighty bent by, say, bumping it when you sit down behind the guitar, when you engage the lever, it might hit the edge of the stop-screw rather than hitting it dead on the top.

And since that stop-screw is dome-shaped, that means the lever will travel slightly farther than if it had made contact directly on top of that screw. So... you end up with a note that is slightly out of tune.

Also, since the metal used for the mounting bracket and the lever itself is soft -- and hitting the stop which is a curved surface -- if you apply a little more knee pressure after hitting the stop, you can actually get the note to move a bit.

One easy way to address this is to spend 20 cents and replace the stop-screw with one that has a larger cap and is flat on top. This will make for a more solid stop. I'm not sure why they didn't just do this when they built them... if they had spent 5 more bucks in manufacturing with stronger knee brackets and better-designed stops, they could have sold them for a lot more.

And for an even better fix, look at this old thread:
http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopi ... 268a8f28b4

Good luck!

Thanks Tucker. Good idea. I don't suppose a simple block of would could serve the same purpose? I'm going to give that a shot. I've never used that lever so I guess that I don't know what I'm missing.

What about upgrading the floor pedals with those from another company such as Emmons or Mullen? Are those parts interchangeable?