The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm just curious as to the play-ability of a guitar with wide or narrow pedals. My LDG, bought in 1977, with gumby head, and teardrop knees, has the narrow ones, and sometimes I get carried away, and my foot misses the A, or B, when I want to press both down. I have never played one with the wide pedals. Was toying with the idea of trying wide ones. Any comments will be welcomed.

The only problem with wide pedals it the tendancy to "hang up" on the A pedal when rocking to the B.
I have a couple of guitars that I cut the lower right corner off on the A pedal to alleviate the problem. In fact, some of the early Sho~Buds came with the corner already cut off.

'63(?) Fingertip

I have one Emmons with the wide pedals and wide spacing, and another Emmons with the wide pedals and narrow spacing (they eventually made narrow pedals for the narrow spacing), and I find the wider spacing between pedals is more forgiving for single pedal work. It seems to be more a matter of the spacing between the edges of the pedals than the size of the pedals themselves. I had an LDG like yours with the claw headstock and the narrow pedals and I liked the narrow pedals a lot. My LDG had the Super Pro style cabinet rather then the earlier round front style cabinet. I'm not sure if Sho-Bud changed the spacing between pedals when they went to narrow pedals; if they did then putting wide pedals on your guitar might be a problem. Did Sho-bud change the spacing when they went to narrow pedals and the smaller Super Pro style cabinets? (like Emmons eventually adjusted for) I would consider that before changing to wider pedals.

Here's a pic of both pedals. You can go wide down to narrow with some spacers and a longer 1/2" axle(any hardware store and a hacksaw), but to go narrow to wide, you would need to cut down the wide to keep your pedal rods straight. There may be enough adjustment to try out the wides with out cutting them first.

Most of the old fingertips came standard with 9 floor pedals. The first 3 pedals(from the left side) were for the front neck, and they were scrunched together to accomodate that 9th pedal, so they cut the corners off to allow for cowboy boots on those 3 cramped pedals. The other 6 pedals were spaced like regular wide pedals, same as the soon to come old Professionals and the Pro II's.

Thanks guys for the information. Gives me fuel for thought.

I have two Sho~Buds . They were suppose to have the small pedals but i dont like them ! When i bought my new Sho~Bud Pro ll Custom back in 1977 i was told at Sho~Bud that we don't install the large pedal anymore . I told them to hunt around the factory and find me the large pedals and they did . When i bought my L.D.G. it had the small pedals but not for long . I traded them for large pedals . I have never had any problems at all with them , never had to work on them or alter them . When i had my Emmons LeGrande lll built i had them to make the pedals somewhat like Sho~Bud and they did . Happy camper with large floor pedals .

I bought a Professional from a "fellow forumite", and realized to my chagrin that someone had hacked the beautiful "wide" pedals down to a "skinny" size. Besides not liking the feel, they don't look so good. Pretty hard to reverse that without finding a whole new rack of em.

I like the skinny ones.....it's easier to press individual pedals (e.g. A w/o B and pedals 5,6, or 7)

My next steel will have narrow. For my feet and ankles they are more accurate.