The Steel Guitar Forum

Hello I,m learning the pedal steel but I have a problem, I have a bad left hand and I can,t use my fingers to mute the strings behind the bar. I can hold the bar ok and doing pretty good with some songs that I have tabs for does anyone a suggestion?

Hard to say without knowing what kind of bar grip you are capable of. While most all will recommend the "standard grip", there have been some steelers who violated conventional grips, but still did a pretty good job! Like Bobby Koefer, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sS5jSbV0Vg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvg7jrVYvT0

You could put a piece of foam between the strings and the fret board up towards the key head. If might make it weird playing the first fret and your open strings would be muted but could make things work a little better.

Bobby Overfelt wrote:Hello I,m learning the pedal steel but I have a problem, I have a bad left hand and I can,t use my fingers to mute the strings behind the bar. I can hold the bar ok and doing pretty good with some songs that I have tabs for does anyone a suggestion?

My left hand was very badly burned when I was 17, and I don't have any obvious way to damp behind the bar. I was trying to do it with the side of my hand, with limited success.

I came upon the idea of using a wrist warmer (i.e., half a glove) and sewing something into it along the edge to damp the strings with. I ended up using a short piece of two-conductor mic cable, the ends capped with bits of heat-shrink tubing, sewed in using a zipper foot.

It works pretty well, and now I feel a lot happier playing around the 12th fret.

--Al Evans

Thanks to all I think I came up with a salution