The Steel Guitar Forum

A friend has a new Goodrich OMI pedal, sounds great. He kept backing off the pedal at times thus disappearing. I had him move the pedal back away from the pedal rack until he found the balancing point where the pedal would not shut completely off. He was able to achieve a more consistent volume while playing.

The volume pedal can make you or break you. I tell my new students to not even plug it in, learn to play, then we can talk about placement and use. Many use it as a crutch so as to not sound bad when they are not sure of a lick etc, vs a tool to make them sound good. Just human nature.


As a teacher my goal is to get you past this, even if I have to use trickery. Hee Hee

I have a D10 P/P Emmons with an Emmons volume pedal pinned to the pedal bar. That's the placement for me. The volume of the amp is critical, also. I think you need just a little more volume if you really need it, so I set playing volume just past the mid point. I agree with learning without the pedal. I can't tell you how many times I cut the volume because of a flub. I guess it has many uses!

Had a friend steel player last June had a heart attach and some complications. When he started to playing his steel again he had to put the volume pedal back nearly touching his seat leg, So his leg went straight down from the knee to ankle. He could only play for an hour or so till he was wore out.
I seen him on stage a couple weeks ago I did not get to look and see if he had changed it back to the pedal bar again.
Position it where you have the best control is what is most important.

I really like having the Emmons pedal mounted on the pedal bar! So much so, that I drilled the pedal bar on my ShoBud to use it on that one, too.

I did some mods to one of my steels with it plugged straight into a practice amp so I could tune up after, and I ended up playing that way for a solid hour.

It made me focus on my attack, as I still have a tendency to back off when I shouldn't. Both my pedals have adjustable off points set so that they go almost but not quite silent.

I would recommend to use ALL your stuff when you learn to play. I would not suggest wait to use the volum pedal. You have to get all your moves "automated". Some call it muscle memory.
It´s like learning to drive a car with stick shift. You do it all at one time till you get it right. Then you train over and over again till you don`t think about it.

My 2 cents.

Dag

Jon Kostal wrote:I have a D10 P/P Emmons with an Emmons volume pedal pinned to the pedal bar. That's the placement for me.

Dave Meis wrote:I really like having the Emmons pedal mounted on the pedal bar!

Agreed. The Emmons design is pure genius. Did Big Ron come up with it, or was it Buddy? Gotta assume it was the latter.

I understand they came up with that design so when playing the Grand Ole Opry, when you picked up your steel to leave the stage, the volume pedal came along with it.
Erv

FYI...

The Lehle Volume 90 has a dial that allows you to set the minimum position of the volume pedal....it can go all the way silent, or just lower the volume to taste.

This feature is not available on the regular Lehle Volume, only the Volume 90.

I have come to believe that these are simply the best volume pedals out there. I just ordered a bracket from Lehle to mount on my steel....hopefully it arrives soonish since it shipped from the EU

My beginner's take on VP, and I've heard both sides...you'll have to tackle it eventually. Jeff Newman advises using it from the start. At this point, I have it in my signal chain, I just try to keep it in place (not full volume) to maintain a proper signal. In other words, I'm mostly practicing keeping it in one spot at the moment. Strangely harder than one might think as a beginner. I'm finding my new GR 120 moves so easily that I have a hard time keeping it in one spot.