The Steel Guitar Forum

I received this pedal steel ten years ago as a partial trade for another guitar. At the time I thought I might reassemble it and learn to play pedal steel. I've played acoustic and electric guitars for 60 years now, yet it's just dawning on me how complex pedal steel is. You guys are musical geniuses.
The prior owner, a pedal steel player, had disassembled it and started a rebuild, at which time he passed away. He took several photos, which I have, of the internal workings of the underside. It looked to be quite a mess. The pickups work. He was replacing the original tuners with Grovers, which looked to be a good move, as the originals showed typical wear and sloppiness after X number of years of use. He seems to have painted the underside black and refinished the top with lacquer.
Ten years back I strung up the one side and made noise, not technically music. I may not be a pedal steel player, but I do know tone and this machine has it.
My first question: what do I have and from what era?
Is it worth reassembling?
Any information is much appreciated.
Thanks for reading this long post.

Looks like a late 60s Pull -release with some odd additions/modifications to the changer. It looks like someone was trying to get it to work something like a Sho-Bud fingertip. I don’t see how it could work. All those springs don’t seem to be possible to do anything. I’d remove the extra springs and threaded rods and nuts, and set it up standard Marlen pull/release. That would be a big project, but has potential to be a nice steel.

Thanks for the information. Here is a photo the original owner took of the underside before it was dissembled.

I’ve rebuilt several Marlens, and have seen lots of variation, but I don’t think the threaded pieces going through the endplates to the fingers, or all of those springs, are original, or really serving a practical function. Springs are necessary in a pull/release system, but not like those.

After looking at the rest of your pictures, I’m going to say early sixties. I’ve seen earlier Marlens with cruder cabinets, endplates and changers, but this one still has the unadjustable undercarriage and the curls on the head castings.

When and where were Marlen guitars made? And by whom?

Reidsville North Carolina. MARvin Hudson and LENeord Stadler combined their first names to get Marlen. Marvin left early on. Leneord pretty much made the Marlens.

Weird spring arrangement! But at least you have a ton of springs now and some rod with holes drilled. You'll probably need those if you want to raise and lower the same string.

I'd put it back together! I love my Marlen. It's rock solid, has amazing tone, rarely goes out of tune, and super smooth. Mechanically it might be limiting to some players (although you can make them do just about anything with enough time and patience) but it sounds like you would probably get a lot out of it as a first steel.

The idea of building this guitar back to useable appeals to me, but I wouldn't know where to start.

This is when the bat signal goes up for Ricky Davis, Ned McIntosh, and Kelcey O'Neil. Search the forum for those names and Marlen and you should get a good start. Ned has a great post in particular with photos that really helped me when I was setting up mine. If I get a minute I'll post it.

Thank you, Andrew
I did a search starting with Ned McIntosh and got a brilliant explanation (with photos) on how a Marlen works. I will need to re-read it several times for it to sink in. I get the pull part, but lowering the note is escaping me. I'll figure it out! Is there a way to bookmark posts here besides copying the URL?

It looks very similar to my Marlen, a 1966 Model 210.

The changer mounting blocks and changer fingers are assembled the wrong way around, as are the tuning heads.

I don't understand what is going on with the underside of the steel, I've seen quite a few Marlens, none of them were identical, but I've never seen one with such a confusing changer mechanism.

Richard Saylor wrote: I get the pull part, but lowering the note is escaping me. I'll figure it out! Is there a way to bookmark posts here besides copying the URL?

I scratched my head for a few days with my guitar upside down!

For a lower, you need a spring in the system that is strong enough to hold the finger against the body (in the "raised" position). Then, your pedal/lever will release the spring tension (by pulling the spring) and allowing the string tension to pull the finger (thus lowering the tone). I've seen different ways to do this depending on what lever/pedal it is.

Don’t waste a lot of time trying to figure out the original owners picture. I’m pretty sure it didn’t work very well that way. I’d remove all the extra springs and screws and study pictures of someone’s pull-release steel that does work. Your undercarriage is a little earlier than Richards, in that the bell ranks are welded to the shafts, and can’t easily be moved, but the shouldn’t be any reason that you can’t get it to work with a fairly standard setup with out adding a lot of parts to what you have already. You will need fewer springs, the just need to be doing the right function

IMHO it's definitely worth restoring, and would involve refinishing and re-assembly by a knowledgeable steel mechanic, like Ricky Davis. But for a total neophyte, like I'm assuming you are from your original post, it's WAY too daunting of a job. Assembling a steel ain't like assembling a Telecaster.

Herb. Yes, I agree. It is a restoration project and not a setup. To restore this to playable condition would require me to know how to play one. It's a bit of a Catch-22.

Here is a picture of an early 60's Marlen. Probably one of the early ones built. The biggest difference I see is the endplates. Mid to late 60's the "curled" endplates. Cabinet looks to be in good shape.
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Steven, thanks for the photo. I am a woodworker and ,yes, the cabinet is in great shape. From the flat headed slotted screws and other hardware I assumed it was of that era.

The cabinet in the picture I think is just a little earlier than yours. On those earlier cabinets, the aprons were a little wider and the endplates were not cast. The underside of the one in this picture would look more like this

If you blow this up and look at the endplates, you can see that they are bent into shape, and the legs screw into threaded plates that are bolted to the body at angles