The Steel Guitar Forum

I posted a steel and suddenly realized I may not understand the terminology of knee levers. My guitar has 8 pedals and 8 knee levers. Then I saw new guitar ads stating their double 10's had 8 pedals and 4 knees.

How does that work? Do the 4 levers work both the E9 neck and the C6 neck?

Mine uses 5 knees on the E9 and 3 on the C6.

I do not want to mislead any one.

There is no trickery here. How many levers do you see? That's how many levers there are, regardless of how they are assigned. 8 + 4 or 8 + 5 is 'standard'. If you have 8 + 8 this would be an expanded setup--not standard but not uncommon.

Billy,
On a D10 set up 8x4, usually the two left knee levers also work on the C6 neck. This is pretty standard, though I do see guitars which have only one knee working on the C6.

For a long time almost all guitars came standard with 8x4. When Jeff Newman popularized the vertical knee(X lever) which generally lowers the b strings, some guitars started coming with 8x5. Again, this primarily affected the E9 neck.

Currently, Emmons and Mullen come standard with 8x4. The Carter and I believe Fessendon come standard with 8x5. I don't know about GFI, Zum, Williams, or Sierra.

On my black Legrande II, I have 8x10 plus the PF 4th pedal. Quite frankly, some of the changes don't get much use, but is does allow me to experiment

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Steve Stallings
Bremond, Texas

Mullen D10
The Blue Angel
Emmons D10 8x10
Emmons D10 8x5
Remington D10 8x7
Evans

Get a guitar with a lot of knees on it. Then as you learn to play better and better, you can take them off and sell them, one at a time.

Steve, Actually it is the two right knee levers that would actuate both necks. But hey, we knew what you meant.

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Carter D10 9p/10k
Richard Sinkler

Thanks for the info. I never knew that about knee levers. There are lots of things I don't know about a steel guitar (among other things)!!

I guess I need to go back and review the Video I bought a while back explaining how steel guitars work.

Thanks!!

oops! I musta been standing in front of the steel when I said that

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Steve Stallings
Bremond, Texas

Mullen D10
The Blue Angel
Emmons D10 8x10
Emmons D10 8x5
Remington D10 8x7
Evans

Or, get a guitar with no knees, and add them as you get better.....Bobbe has 'em on sale.

I always thought that with four you couldn't go wrong once you learned what each one did.
LKL only does one thing, but when you start adding knees it seems to me you have to start
gyrating in the saddle to hit the right one.
That's why I like the idea of b0b's cross over.....lots more combinations from the same spot on the seat??!! Just an old fogey's
opinion. Lots of choices out there!

Doug- Again good thinking! That crossover is a great idea for some people , with 5 knees and 5 pedals for each neck without changing the seating postion and easy to reach it all. More than enough for each tuning.....al