The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm new to steel (& loving it!) I'm playing C6 because it's the first neck i saw when i looked down, and because the dang strings at least all tune higher as you go across the neck (like a guitar).

My question is: Do C6 players tend to not use a volume pedal? Seems my right foot is too busy with pitch-change pedals...

David, I keep both feet on the pedals for C6th and E9th. I think we are very much in the minority though.

I commonly use both feet on the pedals when playing C6. I also have a Franklin type change on pedal 8 I use on the E9 tuning. It takes some practice and feels odd at first if you're used to relying on the volume pedal a lot.

Sounds like you have it well under control though, and I think your technique will be quite advantageous. Best of luck with your steel pickin

Whenever you don't need both feet, you should be using the left foot for the C6th pedals. That let's you handle the volume pedal most of the time. One change I made early on was to move P5 to a knee lever, which eliminated a lot of the two-footed chords. (I wouldn't recommend changing, though, until you have learned to use what you have.)

I wondered if that was common, but what about the fact that the pedals are so far to the right?

Don't most folks have knee levers that would keep their left foot away from the C6's right pedals?

David, the steels often have two extra knee levers which operate on the C6th neck and are placed directly over those pedals.