The Steel Guitar Forum

Has anyone ever put Stringmaster Pickups on the back neck of modern Pedal Steel? I have a Fessenden D-10 and have been debating putting two in with a blend knob. I’ve never been a big 10 string C6 guy and usually have my back neck tuned 8 string C#m, A6 or E13. I love the stringmaster tone but would rather have the pickups in my pedal steel instead of dragging my Stringmaster to gigs along with my pedal steel. Just curious if anyone out there has done it? Hopefully soon I’m going to try to figure out how to redo my back neck copedent where I can use the pedals to switch between those three tuning. Haha. A headache I’ve been putting off for a while.

I’ve never done it myself but I’ve modified steels in other ways. I have put two pickups on a regular E9 neck and had some success in getting different tones. I think it’s an idea worth pursuing. I think if you find it more useful for your purposes, by all means go for it.

Basil Henriques' Fender 1000 comes close to that, I think he modified the front neck of his to have a second pickup (I think wired in a similar way as a Stringmaster?). Not a modern steel, though, of course. And his A7 copedent is pretty unique, you can easily get A6, C6, and E6 with only a few pedals (and lots more "exotic" chords if you give it more pedals).

I don't know how much of the Stringmaster tone is in the pickups and how much comes from everything else , the bridge , the body , the nut and keyhead.
I have considered putting a complete Stringmaster neck on the back of my SD10 , which used to be a D10 . Happen to have one laying around , which is the front neck of a T8 , the thinnest body of all the Stringmasters.

Jason Lollar makes 10 string Stringmaster pickups. I bought 2 of them and put them on a Fender 800 single 10 cable pull Fender pedal steel that came with 6 pedals. I had Chas Smith cut out custom pickup mounting plates that looked like they were made by Leo himself and I wired it up with 1 volume control and a blender. I mounted an aluminum bar across the back of the frame and added 6 knee levers and I used cables and pulleys I got off people who had spare parts off Fender 400s and 1000s.I invented knee lever mounts,stops and reversing doo-dads w/roller bearings,etc and each one was a different shape and length according to the function of the lever so they all would be equally easy to engage and have similar length strokes. I did all that with hand tools and a drill press. When I was done it looked like some one-of-a-kind Fender prototype from 1964. It was a West Coast steel player's wet dream. A 10 string Stringmaster with 6+6. Because the 800 has a double raise/double lower changer I was able to get all the changes of a modern loaded E9 and then some - including a tunable half-stop on the 2nd string. It was a magical guitar, sounded just like you'd imagine and the Lollars were punchy and powerful. Six months after I finished it and played it on a few gigs, I was forced to sell it to pay medical expenses after my health insurance got cancelled because I had cancer. I'll never have one of those again. But I can recommend the Lollars for a home brew Lap steel or pedal steel modification.

Michael- It's a shame you had to sell your Fender 800 to pay medical bills... what a fantastic project. Whoever ended up with it is one lucky steel player.

It's somewhere in Louisiana. I like to hope its being played out on the bandstand in some smokey beer joint by a fine player who knows how special it is, and not gathering dust in a closet.

Michael,I’m in Louisiana and I wish I knew where that 800 model is. I started on the very same project and got busy and sold the guitar. Saw it on eBay awhile back. I bet that was a great sounding guitar.

Btw, the craftsmanship is impeccable.

All the effort to make the lollars look/work like originals.. Is that metal plate alum. or chromed steel? ..then, only 6 mo. worth of use! Crying shame the creator was cheated, Michael. Not to mention all the efforts put into actuator wizardry..the reverser links approach desmodromic valve drive features, but that butts into topic drift. Maybe it will find the originator once again ..if stars align for you.