The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm interested to know how many players (E9th that is) set their pedals any way other than Emmons or Day setup. I assume everyone sets the floor pedals A,B,C or C,B,A so it is the knee levers I am more interested in. I personally use the Day setup and set my knee levers, from left to right, LLK-B to Bb (5th string), LRK-E's to F. RLK-E's to Eb and RRK-Eb to D. I know most people have their E's to Eb on the LLK (on an Emmons setup.) I know that some people raise their 1st & 7th strings F# to G, again which I believe is classed as standard Emmons. I would also like to know how many players have changed their setup to something different from what they started with and stuck with it. I am of course talking about 3 pedals and 4 knee levers.
Dave.

mine are: B, A no C.
RKR E-F#
RKL E-Eb
LKR E-F

just so you know there's more than 2 ways.

As a beginner, I spend a lot of time looking at what others do, and the allocation of levers seems to divide into two camps: those who believe that the E raises and lowers should be on the same knee as you never use them together; and those who acknowledge that but prefer them separate anyway! After that it's personal choice - with modern instruments it's so easy to swap things that there is no pressure to standardise.

My LKR drops 8 (along with 2) to D, and I have no open D string. It opened a world of options in chord movement, thumb strums, etc. when I made this change 35 years ago. Pedals are ABC, E's are on right knee.

So Bruce, is your 9th string B and your 10th an E??

It makes total sense to have your E levers on the same leg...and even more sense to have them on your left leg. At least, to me it does.
To take that a step further, it's really cool to have your B to Bb vertical lever on your left leg so you can use it in conjunction with your right leg lever that moves your 1st string up a whole and your 2nd string up a half. JMHO, of course.
As far as being stuck with the system you learned on, I don't think that's such a big deal. You can get used to any setup with just a little practice.

With MY vocabulary of changes and patterns, the E levers live together because if they didn't there'd be conflicts.
You stipulated 3 & 4: if I were faced with that limitation, I'd keep the 5 lower and lose the E raises.
I'd probably do like Jeff Newman and have LKV, LKR, RKR and RKL, forsaking a LKL.
I'd have LKV lower 5, LKR lower the Es, and RKL would raise 1 to G and lower 6 to F#, with RKR lowering 2 and 9.

Dave, my 9th is B. 10th is usually open A, but on one guitar it is open G# pulled to A by the B pedal.

Day setup. A little unusual.
[tab]
LKL1 LKL2 LKV LKR 1 2 3 4 5 RKL RKR
F#.........G#....G
D#.........E................................D/C#
G#...............................A
E...D#................F......F#
B............................C#......C#...Bb
G#...............................A.................F#
F#..............G........G#
E...D#...............F
D........................E
B....................................C#
[/tab]

Dave,
If you have any bit of curiosity like a lot of us do,your going to try to see if you can
come up with something diff.by moving pedals and knee levers around.It looks like it
has to be Emmons or Day on the E-9th pedals.The 4 knee levers could be any way
you choose to try them.
It's all up to you to move them around and see which you like the best.(now it comes
under whatever works best for you)Once you start adding more pedals or knee levers it
gets complicated because you want all the combinations you can get from your new lever
or pedal change.Since I have 7 knee levers on E-9th my F lever is RKL & my Eb lever is RKR.
Here is something that I do that is not the norm. On my F lever I added a pull rod to
lower the 7th string F# to F to match 4&8 strings.Now you have a strum diminished chord
like pedal's 5&6 on C6th,let's do the same thing to the Eb lever add a pull rod to string 9
and raise it toEb to match strings 4&8.now you have a strum chord like C6th.
One of my other knee levers lowers the 2nd string & 8th string to D.The D note on
the 8th string now matches the 9th string.Now when you strum up from string 10 up to 4
that E9th chord sound's like pedal 6 on C6th.My goal was to see if I could get some
C6th sounding chord's on E9th without removing the 9th string as the UNI's do.
There's more to my C6th side of E9th but I don't need to get into that at this time.
So I say give your Idea's a go and see if they will work for you,then share them with
all of us your fellow Steel players.
Thanks'
Don the Beachcomber

My older MSA came with the e raise and lower on the right leg, but I got convinced on this forum, ten years ago that putting the f raise on the left knee allowed a really smooth change from d# to f using opposite legs. I tried it and like it a lot, and yes, sometimes I wish they were on the same leg cause there are drawbacks due to inability to combine with other pulls. You get something, you give something. And that's how you personalize the instrument.

Hi Dave
Standard Day here. My lever arrangement way different to yours.

[tab]
LKL1 LKV LKR 1 2 3 4 RKL RKR
F#...................................G/G#
D#...................................E.....D/C#
G#......................A
E...Eb..........F...F#
B.........Bb........C#......C#..A
G#......................A.......F#...F#
F#
E...Eb..........F
D..........................................C#
B.........Bb................C#..A
[/tab]

Like Tom, I spent my formative years on an MSA with the E's on the right. About a year and a half ago, I went to the E's on the left. It seems to me to be more intuitive, having these changes on the left side. Given that I tend to need them more than the levers on the right, I can better focus the right leg on the volume pedal. I would say it took a good 6 months before I stopped looking for the E raise/lower on the right side of the guitar.

Zane King has a different arrangement of the pedals. He combines the F# with the G# to A, and puts it next to the B to C#. I'm trying to get used to that.

I have standard A,B,C pedals, E's on the left, RKL lowers G#'s to G, RKR Lowers 2&8 to D, string 9 is B to C# on A pedal, and 10 is G# to A on B pedal. I seldom use the C pedal, I usually just hit the RKL and move up 2 frets, this also makes 5,6, and 8 work the same. I've been thinking about putting the Franklin change on the C pedal.
Regards, Norm

My knee lever setup is kind of unconventional. I started out with 3 knee levers and just added as I went along, where it seemed to work. I had no teacher and wasn't around any other players to copy from. Here's what I've used on E9 for a long time.

Pedal Tuning
P1=R5&10C#
P2=R3&6A
P3=R5C# R4&8F#
P4=L6F# L9C# L5&10A
Lever Tuning
LKL=R4&8F
LKR=L4&8D#
RKL=R1G# R2E
RKR=L2D-C# R1&7G

After much tinkering I found this to be the most useful to me.

This past week, I changed some of my changes.

[tab]
LKL1 LKL2 LKV LKR 1 2 3 4 5 RKL RKR
F#...............G........................G#
D#.........D..............................E...C#
G#................................A
E...D#................F.......F#
B........................D....C#.....C#
G#................................A.................F#
F#...............G
E...D#................F
D.............................................C#
B....................................C#
[/tab]