The Steel Guitar Forum

A couple of months ago I started researching into buying a pedal steel..After looking at my finances I decided to buy a Carter Starter...Then I read here and there that they were not thought highly of..The other day I broke a string and I called a friend of mine to help in changing strings..He came to my house and brought a friend of his with him who is a pro picker - you could say...after changing strings he played the starter and told me.." bring this to my house and let me do some tweaking on it"..I went and spent a couple hours with him..Readjusting the knee travel..some rods that were rubbing too much etc..After doing this he looked at me and said" this guitar will do anything a pro model will do and then some-- What ya take for it.."...........I said this to get to this point...For a new player or anyone who is looking for a guitar, BUY a carter starter, Get it set up by a pro who knows what they are doing and play like tomorrow never comes.And enjoy the money you saved for other "toys"...

David ,,A couple of years ago I played a Carter Starter for while just to try it, and I thought it worked real nice and sounded great..I think they're a great little guitar...When I started learning to play the steel in the early 70's,,it was hard to find a student model guitar, let alone one with 4 kl's...There are a lot more choices today,,plus a lot of instructional material to choose from...Having said that though,,the main thing is practise and lots of it....... Carson

the LKR was insanely stiff. I just switched the rods to the highest holes in the bell crank and that did the trick. I'm not sure why they come like that. But I've always thought it was to get the new coming steel player to get in there himself and learn something about his guitar. That might or might not be true.

But It worked like that for me. I sat there and studied the under workings and got an idea how they worked. But I've always been into tinkering with stuff.

Like for me...I'm a Metal Musician so all the regular guitars i play when i play Metal...are double locking tremolo cause i love playing the whammy bar and doing those dime bag dive squeals.

It's not hard to set up a tremolo but a lot people act like it's way over their head to even try. Like Ray Hennings here in Austin. He won't touch em and swares up and down that double locking tremolo is the Devil of guitars and there just horrible instruments. He says "your musician not a technician." But i disagree cause

I've always thought the more i know about how my instrument and how it works the more it'll work for me and i'll be able to fix something on the spot when it breaks down instead of having wait on somebody else. And it's cheaper.

Most were good it seems . some had a problem with the knee levers bending inward. so you'll always get those two sides of the coin when you ask about these guitars. those who got the good ones wonder why people complain. those who got the bad ones wondered how anyone could play one

if ya got a good one yeah, go man go!
they got all the levers you need and they sound okay and the price is right.
I still think this guitar was a great idea. bring the pedal steel to the musicians friends masses. it just suffered a bit from the reputation it got from those who encountered those bendable knee levers.

all this is merely my opinion (and experience having briefly owned one)

Ben said :

some had a problem with the knee levers bending inward

well....it was that plus the return springs were weak, the knee lever travel was waaay to far
among other problems

but i also agree that not everyone seemed to have these problems ,
some guys got what they described as good little guitars so maybe it was just the luck of the draw ..who knows

the one i had was @#&%#$@.... thats all i am gonna say about it

To each his own,Awhile back was thinking about one to play on small gigs because of the weight . A friend [never played before] happened to buy one to learn on,he asked me to come and set it up for him. I did Sure am GLAD I got my hands on one before I ordered one unseen.That little trip to my friends house saved me from making a BIGGGGG mistake. Would rather wear my back out carrying a REAL guitar, YOU BETCHA.DYK?BC.

when I first got mine and read all the negatives I thought'what have I done' . But after about 2 hours of tweaking and adjusting it plays great....I recomend buying one and have it PROFFESIONALLY set up.....

they would be ok for the twlight zone da da dum dum

I have a friend who owns one and The LKR has so much travel in it that I can't work the pedals and knee lever at the same time.Forumite Larry Allen welded the LKR on another Starter supposedly fixed the problem?Not a bad sounding guitar however.I couldn't recommend one if it has that LKR problem.

David Beckner wrote:when I first got mine and read all the negatives I thought'what have I done' . But after about 2 hours of tweaking and adjusting it plays great....I recomend buying one and have it PROFFESIONALLY set up.....

uh David ...would Bobby Bowman be PROFESSIONAL enough for you ..even he could not help that @$%$*#$@*&^
like i said, some got good one's others got what i got !!! its a crap shoot

It is a simple job to add a pull rod onto the knee lever and run that rod thru a stationary changer finger hole then put the nylon tuning nut on it. You then have an adjustable knee lever stop and a very stable one. That was the one flaw in design in my opinion which could have been easily solved by adding this type lever stop.
Jerry

I too had problems after a year or so with the LKL bending.
I took a small vice-grip and clamped it on the KL at the joint to add some weight and strength. It still works fine. It stays in tune very well I might add.

Clete