The Steel Guitar Forum

item 270103883911 is a Fender 8 string with 8 pedals.
It shows the under carriage with the cables hooked up.
It appears to me that all of the cables are attached to the first four strings. Was this a common setup for a fender like this? Does anyone have a copedent
for this? Curious about the history of these old cable types. Thanks in advance.

Mike

CLICK THIS to see a pdf of an old Fender 400 (single 8 string) PSG manual. It's posted on the Carter site, along with several other hard-to-find steel guitar manuals/schematics.

Was this a common setup for a fender like this?

No. You can almost never take ebay pictures literally. The seller (or the someone who cleaned and repainted the guitar) just didn't have any idea where they went.

Does anyone have a copedent for this?

Fender had a copedent, but almost no one used it. Fender's tunings were, well...obsolete when they were printed. A "standard" copedant didn't exist, and wasn't needed, since you could change the whole thing in 10 minutes.

I recently put the "factory tunings" on a Fender 1000, D-8, as listed in the owner's manual, with the factory pedal changes. The tunings were E7 and A6. I noticed immediately that the pedal changes / tunings were okay for swing and big band styles, but there was nothing close to a 'modern' pedal steel sound. Maybe it's more accurate to say that there were no 'country sounds' in those setups, if that’s what you’re looking for. The factory tunings are from the early days of pedal steel... pre-E9.

If I owned an 8-string Fender PSG I’d set to up for E9, tuned to strings 1 through 8 of the standard 10 string E9 tuning. Another option would be E9, strings 3 through 10 of standard 10 string. I would not omit any of the inner strings (of standard 10 string E9) because most players eventually switch to 10 string, and why make that any harder to learn?
A lot of players tune the old Fender PSGs to D9 to minimize string breakage. These guitars do not handle the high G# to A pedal pull very well!

Doug Beaumier wrote:If I owned an 8-string Fender PSG I’d set to up for E9, tuned to strings 1 through 8 of the standard 10 string E9 tuning.

I imagine this would work on a Harlin 8-string Multi-Kord too. I'm in the process of restoring one at the moment and I've been giving a lot of thought to what copedant to use.

The Multi-Kord is really well served using the stock Harlin copedent. It's a "chord changer" guitar, very unlike modern steels - more like having multiple lap steels, as the pedals are designed to change tunings, not for scale or lick playing.

Fender cable guitars were kind of in the middle - the manual is set up showing them as "chord changer" types, but they play much like modern steels when well-serviced. I have several, and E9 works fine, but I like the B6 tuning Sneaky Pete used (the copedent is on the forum's copedent page). It's really an early type of universal tuning. It takes a couple of little tricks if the knee levers are installed to get double raise/lowers, but it's easily accomplished.

I have an 8-pedal, 2 knee lever '63 400 that plays nearly as smoothly and quickly as my GFI. There are lots of ways to make those guitars very usable, and as mentioned the copedent can be changed in minutes.

The one on eBay with the cables all bunched together is either in an oddball tuning or the seller just doesn't know how to set it up.

The manuals are also available on the Fender website. Interestingly, the 400 tuning/copedent is not the same as either neck of the 1000! The stock 400 A6 does make a cool western swing tuning, though.

Lots more info on Fender steels here, at the Fender cable steel forum:

http://scaryoak.com/forum/index.php

I believe that the later Fender PSGs (mid 60s) had a roller bridge, and the 1950s ones did not. So maybe there is less string breakage on the ones with the roller bridge?

First time i heard the instrument and asked the guy what was this instrument he had a fender 400,8 string 4 pedals,a,b,c,and 7th on 4th pedal and it had a partner which he sold to me, i recognised a:was a nice instrument,and b:was a nice instrument..
and c:was great fun..)

Doug - No, the roller bridge was a Fender aftermarket set for the early long-scale models only. The later ones (my '63 400 is one) have a pivoting finger bridge that's radiused - the finger and bridge are all one unit. All the short-scale, black-pedal models have that type - the roller units only fit the long-scale models with seperate fingers and bridge.

There's less string breakage on the short-scale simply due to less tension, but even the long-scale units aren't really the "string breakers" some claim - the sinple bar bridge works fine if it's smooth and has the right lubricatng material. The rollers are an improvement, though...but any itme you add moving parts, you lose a bit of sustain, so there's a trade-off.

One of my long-scales has pivoting shims over the bar bridge - a really novel and nicely done concept. There are a few old threads about it...

Jim Sliff wrote:The Multi-Kord is really well served using the stock Harlin copedent.

Jim: Do you happen to know what that stock copedant was ? (By the way, the Multi-Kord I'm working on has been converted to rods. I understand that that was a common conversion as the cords were prone to breakage.)

Alan, you have incoming email....

I have an old Fender 1000 with the original booklet and tuning set up and I believe that Alvino Rey set up the tuning arrangement ?? I read that somewhere !! It was an E-7th and A-6th . You had to use both feet on up to four pedals to get all the chords !! If any one wants the original Fender pedal setup I will send a copy out to them . My E-mail is listed . P. S. Doug "B" After I posted this I checked out your posting on the "400" tunings. They have many more detailed tunings listed , must be a later edition !! They show all in the basic A-6th tuning , even showing the "Isaac" change from A-6th to E . ?? Interesting !!

I would like to get the "chord" copedent.
A long, long time ago, I was curious about Pedal Steel but learning about all the various tunings
was daunting as I was having trouble going from
regular E to open G on a six string. Curiousity finally killed this cat and now I am curious about
the history I ignored. Thanks for all the feedback.
Really appreciate it.

Mike, I don’t know what you mean by "chord copedant", but the Fender 1000 [D-8] owners manual shows:

* the two tunings (E7 & A6)

* the pedal changes for each tuning

* the chords produced by pressing the various pedal combinations (which they call the different "tunings" created by the pedals).

Images from the Fender 1000 catalog are posted below. The first one shows the open tunings and the 8 pedal changes. Unfortunately that chart is too small to read unless you download it and enlarge it in a photo program. The second image shows what chords are available by using the pedals. Fender refers to these as different open "tunings" that may be created using the pedals.

I know that you are interested in the history of PSG tunings, but in my opinion these old Fender PSG tunings are Not worth bothering with. I’d say forget them and concentrate on standard E9 or C6. I put these tunings/changes on a Fender 1000 recently, and they are pretty much unusable IMHO. These early pre-E9 tunings were derived from non-pedal tunings, and evidently the designers saw the pedals as "tuning changers" rather than for chords and licks (as Jim said above). In my opinion your time would be better spent learning the standard E9 tuning.

Fender was obviously promoting the guitars for western swing and big-band type use, and it wasn't until the short-lived PS210 project that they "modernized" a guitar.

The great thing, though, is that of all the guitars that were designed/intended as "chord changers", the Fender is the one design that holds up as something playable as a "lick" guitar. Properly set up and with a few tricks (we discuss them on the Fender steel page) you can get multiple raises/lowers, a quick, light feel, and they have tremendous tone plus zero cabinet drop. They also sustain far better than most players think.

Most of the ones being played are in the top or bottom-8 of E9; some in C6; and quite a few in Sneaky Pete's B6. Another great thing about them is that if you want to change your copedent, it takes just a few minutes, so you can try lots of things until you find what suits you.

FWIW the 1000 manual really is kind of weird as far as the chord changes/copedents, but the 400's different version of the A6 copedent is a nice western swing setup.

For all around playing, though, I (and many others) think Sneaky's B6 has more versatility - most of the E9 "corn" coupled with C6 changes - really a mini-universal.

There's also tons of support, so anyone who decides to step into the Fender world won't be alone.

The earliest Fender 1000 manuals were one color, printed on a tan paper. They were a little more involved, chord-wise, than the one pictured above. One thing that really threw me were the weird pedal combinations. The had a lot of 4-pedal conbinations, along with combinations like "3, 5 & 8". Try hitting that one, one time!

The Fenders, due to one-piece frames and large pieces of lumber they used (you couldn't really call them "boards") had a very metallic sound, with about 99% of the sound coming from the string itself, having very little of the mellow "woody" characteristic of some later steels made with thinner pieces of wood. The tones weren't shrill unless you were using a small amp, then that thin "Fender sound" really started to ring out. (This is one guitar that really benefits from an on-board tone control.) Sustain, though decent, wasn't anything like most modern steels.

Thanks Jim for sending me the Multi-Kord catalog and set up.

This is proving to be a very informative thread.