The Steel Guitar Forum

Like everyone else here on the forum, I spend hours trying to dream up the ultimate pedal/change arrangement. I came up with a rather nice one for U12, but I found out that I wound up with one string with 5 raises, another with 4 lowers. With a triple raise/lower guitar, this becomes difficult. Then I thought, if an imtermediate cross-rod was used, two (or more) pedals raising (or lowering) the string by the same amount could activate the intermediate cross-rod, and it in turn activate the string puller. It would require, of course, that the linking rod between the pedal/knee-lever cross rod and the intermediate cross-rod be allowed to "slip" at one or the other end (or both) to prevent one pedal tied to the intermediate shaft from trying to activate another pedal tied to the same intermediate shaft. Don't know if I'm coming across, but think of it like the action used for right-moving knees, except that the pull rod between the two cross shafts would pass through the pull lever and be allowed to slip. Kinda like the MSA pull fingers, except that instead of tying the pull rod to the pull finger with a set screw, it would pass through and then be capped with a nut beyond the pull finger. This way if the intermediate shaft was activated by another pedal, the moving pull rod would simply slip backwards through the pull finger of the unactivated pull cross-shaft. Anyway, this would work (imho)....and I wonder if it has been done. An easy way to add additional pulls provided you are careful to not hook up a desired full tone raise and a half tone raise (or lower, or whatever) to the same intermediate shaft. With a little engineering, you could have an unlimited number of raise/lower actions for the same string (provided, of course, you limited the raises to three - 1/2 tone, full tone, and tone and a half...ditto for the lowers). The only disadvantage I can think of is that all the pulls to the same base note would have to be the same...you wouldn't be able to pull one a few cents different for one chord combination than another - but maybe that wouldn't be necessary much anyway. What do you think?

It's called a slave change and I got a couple on my Sierra,except mine are all independently tunable.One pull rod just hitches a ride on another rod thru a small one-way sliding aluminum block w/2 holes in it and 2 collars and you route the new rod out to some other string's unused rod hole at the changer where you tune the extra change.The trick is to not put that little section of tubing on the rod behind the tuning nut so it never makes contact with it's host changer finger.It's easy on a Sierra because the whole rod turns when you tune a change and the nylon nut is in the bellcrank instead of down by the changer(long story).But I've seen something like it done on MSAs,MCIs,and just about any other guitar except maybe a push-pull and they kind of work like that anyway.It would take a lot of tellin to describe exactly how it works w/out a picture,but you're on the right track. -MJ-

Gil,
A guy named Vic Chaney from Vallejo,Ca makes
and sells these 'x-links' to add changes when
your out of slots. It tunes from underneath
The parts are about 16$ a pair.
This may or may not be his e-mail (its old)
chaney@community.net
or search the Forum for his name

wasn't that sort of the concept of the ShoBud(basket case....not the real name, guess it was the rack & barrel)set-up?? Seems there was one raise finger & one lower finger, but lots of possible pedals & knees that could chage that particular string! I remember Al Marcus talking about it! My '68
Bud cross-over was sort of like that?

Thanks, guys. Glad you were able to make some sense from my jabbering. I guess there really is nothing new under the sun. Thanks again.

Oh, yea, and MJ....I used to live there in Sylmar...on Dyer street, about 25 years ago. Nice view of the valley!

Doug-I sure do remember the old Rack and Barrel tuning Sho-Buds. One row of holes for Raises and one Row of holes for lowers, all set for maximum leverage.

If you had a barrel tuner on say, p4 and p5 on same string, same rod. when you activate p4 the barrel on P5 just went along with the rod, didn't activate.

This was a very good system, if they made the barrels shorter, they could squeeze more pedals in.

Mullen had a early guitar with a similar setup. Just think One rod could give you as many raises or lowers as you had pedals!!

With a 3 holer modern, you don't get leverage the same on all three holes.

Those old Sho-Buds were very easy to push pedals and knees, and I think stayed in tune very well.

Of course they had beautiful wood bodies and had a great sound, but they were heavy!.

Just think these were built 30 years ago. We haven't come so far after all.sigh....al

"There's nothing you can do that ain't been done..." (John Lennon)