The Steel Guitar Forum

Does anyone out there know if the changer fingers on most guitars have bearings or just a alum. finger on a steel shaft ?

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Most fingers are aluminum on a steel shaft. There may be a high dollar custom guitar or two, such as Anapeg that may have bearings. Dekley used chrome plated steel fingers and stainless steel roller nuts.

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Jim Smith jimsmith94@charter.net
-=Dekley D-12 10&12=-
-=Fessenden Ext. E9/U-13 8&8=-

Jim is correct.

Some feel that a bearing (while being better mechanically) would deteriorate the tone. It is also interesting that aluminum gives a better tone than steel or brass, according to some builders I have spoken to.

Carl

Thanks a lot for the responce.

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Bearings are useful when they are involved in constant motion, such as, a spindle ball bearing on an automobile front axle. Why would anyone want to install a roller bearing into a device that has so little rotation? Lubrication is the key to reducing friction on a smooth shaft. To do otherwise is like placing a whip socket on an automobile. Acquired differences in the overall sound, is pure speculation, lacking the proof that
such phenomena does exist. The tones of the steel guitars have always been the least problematic, compared to the flimsy mechanical assemblies found in a number of instruments, which were manufactured in the past.

Bill H.


<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Bill Hankey on 29 May 2002 at 08:39 AM.]</p></FONT>

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:</font><HR><SMALL> Some feel that a bearing (while being better mechanically) would deteriorate the tone.

Lubrication is the key to reducing friction on a smooth shaft. </SMALL><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Yes Yes, the bearing would be another device and material that the vibrations would have to pass through to get to the guitar and back.

Chas, what do you think of bronze impregnated with moly or oil as an axle?

Sage,
That is what I was thinking, that a bronze bushing would be the only bearing that would work in these applications.

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Bronze, oilite, for an axle is probably not a good idea. Bronze isn't anywhere near as strong as steel and oilite is porous, which should make it weaker and maybe it would damp the vibrations.

Years ago at the Temporary Contempory Art Musuem, downtown, there was a show called Helter Skelter. One of the installations by Richard Jackson was a room where the walls and ceiling were made out of 1000 clocks all synced together. The fabricator decided to make the axles, for the hands, from sintered oil impregnated bronze and every one of them broke and failed. Richard wasn't too happy about it.

Usually, you see this stuff used for bushings, so if you were going to use it, you could press it into the finger and that would ride on the steel axle. I'd be curious to hear if it made a difference. Maybe a real engineer will check in with an answer.

100% failure WOW, very hard to believe.Just for the record, I built 13 guitars in the 70's that had that type of bearing that sounded great and had no failures at all.As the speed of changers is slow in comparison to a motor for example, I see no reason that one would encounter a failure.However, I am a EE and not ME for 40+ years, so it would take a good ME to coment on this topic.

several things...
The Anapeg does NOT use bearings in the changer, and the chaher is made from stainless steel.
The old ZBs had the finger from stainless, and my Kline does too. A great sound.
Think of the old Fenders-- no axle at all-- they rotated on a hardened knife-edge.

Winnie

For a number of years, I have observed the all too common lack of sustain/tremolo effect built into, virtually, all steel guitars. Typically, when a player shivers the bar, a purely resonating, and sustained response should be put forth, minus the struggle to avoid excessive decay of the vibrating notes. The difference is quite noticeable when moving from one steel guitar to another. The vague dissimilarities might very well be attributed to sustain "leaks" found in the design of the instruments. The modern changer is still on trial, and may prove to be involved in the scheme of things relating to vibrations.

Bill H.