The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm in the process of recording a 3rd CD, and I'm working on a passage that calls for some very fast triplets, which I'm playing by hitting the lower B string (the 9th on my guitar) and very quickly stomping on the A pedal and releasing it.

Now I have 3 pulls on that pedal (I drop my 12th string down to A with it) and it's a little stiff, which slows it down a tad. Not enough to make a difference under normal circumstances, but it this case I literally could not step on the pedal and release it fast enough to play the part.

So I disabled the 2 pulls I am not using for this passage. It does help. The lowered resistance gives me just enough extra speed to be able to play the passage. But here's the weird part. When I disabled the 2 changes on my A pedal, the remaining change went out of tune. Even weirder, my B pedal also went out of tune.

Of course, I simply re-tuned them. But this makes absolutely no sense to me. Does anybody have any theories why this happened?

The change on your A pedal went out of tune due to cross shaft flex. I'm assuming your B pedal went out of tune when used with your A pedal, this would be caused by the change in pressure on the changer axle and cabinet drop.

Mike, assuming you're still playing an old MSA, cross-shaft flex is out of the question. Those shafts are 3/8" solid steel! More likely is that you had "tightened up" the linkage by having no slack in the pull. When you do this with an all-pull changer, it actually makes the changer "work against itself". It happens when players overtighten a tuning nut to get a pedal "in tune", and it's usually evidenced by a notch forming in the finger-stop plate. The lowers and raises working against each other causes the fingers to work up and down slighty, thereby forming the "notch". (I've seen them .060" deep or more!)

Likely as not, the A pedal changes (being over tightened) weren't really "in" to start with, and then when you "disabled" the offending pulls, the B pedal changes seemed out of tune with the rest of the guitar.

A similar type of thing happens when a guitar player finds his guitar slightly out of tune, and then compensates by retuning all but the one "out-of-tune" string to try and make it sound "in tune" again.

Make sure you have a little slack in <u>every</u> pull rod, and this won't happen again. <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Donny Hinson on 10 November 2002 at 03:23 PM.]</p></FONT>

Bar Travel???




------------------
TheEarlyDays.com

and appearing regularly...
Jimmy Crawford/Russ Hicks... and Buddy Emmons on Bass! aLotOfSpace.com

Donny is right about the cross shafts. But I don't think the the pull rods were over-tightened. The guitar was tweaked by Tom Bradshaw only 3 weeks ago, and is working perfectly.

The B pedal went sharp by about 5 Hz according to my tuner.

This is not a problem. As I said, I simply re-tuned the pedals. I'm not yet done recording the passage in question, and once I am, I have to re-record it an octave higher, which means I'll have to loosen up the change that's currently working and put back the one of the 5th string.

But I sure don't understand why it is happening. Jim and Donny's explanations make a certain amount of sense, but I think neither one is really correct.

Terry's explanation is more of an accurate description of my playing in general.

As I think Donny is a great extreamly knowledgable Person in all his replies....I'll have to go with Jim on this one.
Mike when you unenguaged the two pulls you also took the pressure off the changer axle and yes it may be 3/8" dia...but it is only supported on the ends....and will move just that slightest bit.....and the biggest clue is all those changes your talking about went SHARP.....that means the B to C# finger(s)is next to the G# finger(s) and now when that finger is not pulling on the Axle as much or at all...that the finger(s) next to it will not drop as much or at all...so it will be sharp to what it was normally when all pulls are inset.
.....so that's my story and insight as I have done extensive research on this.
....that is of course if the fingers are not overtuned as Donny spoke of.....as this would have the first affect....but you said they weren't.
Ricky<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Ricky Davis on 10 November 2002 at 11:51 PM.]</p></FONT>

Rickey, I think you may have figured out why the A pedal change when sharp. The theory that the cross shaft migh have shifted position in it's housing makes sense. But why would the B pedal also go sharp?

I think we may never really know the answer to this one.

At any rate, as I said earler, this is not a problem. I merely re-tuned the pedals, and will re-tune them again when I return the guitar to normal.

Cool Mike; and yes as you stated...it doesn't really matter cause you can just re-tune.
But knowing these things is important and why they happen; and can instill confidence in someone knowing that when they do make changes and other changes suffer...it doesn't mean it's a bad guitar(or one guitar drops more than another)...just means everything works together once set up..and if you change things..others will suffer and need to be re-tweeked.
Ricky<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Ricky Davis on 11 November 2002 at 09:04 AM.]</p></FONT>