The Steel Guitar Forum

A studio owner asked if I could go through and restring an old MSA Sidekick that he had stored away for years. I said sure but I’ve quickly found out it’s pedal rods are not original and are at least 2-3 inches too long. Unplayable really. Not being familiar with this student model I’m guessing the original rods are quite a bit shorter than any steel I’ve had experience with. None of the miscellaneous, spare rods I have fit.

Any Sidekick pedal rods available? If not, would some kind Sidekick owner measure their rods from hook to the other end, including the connector, and send or post that measurement, please? As a last resort I could shorten and tap the (unusable) rods that came with it.

Thanks.

May want to check the height of the guitar, Is the body standard height with a set of extended height rods, or are the legs short?
Sounds like there may be a set of longer legs, And/Or a shorter set of rods still stored away somewhere.
Good Luck in this project.

If the rods are actually too long and if they also have rolled threads, I would recommend rebending the hook. If they are standard rolled threads, the threads are actually fatter than the rod and you can't get the right spec of thread on a rod that's too narrow without rerolling new threads. It would be a shame to sacrifice nice rolled threads. If those are the nice rods, someone will be able to bend them for you and buff out the job real nice.

Don McKinley wrote:If the rods are actually too long and if they also have rolled threads, I would recommend rebending the hook. If they are standard rolled threads, the threads are actually fatter than the rod and you can't get the right spec of thread on a rod that's too narrow without rerolling new threads. It would be a shame to sacrifice nice rolled threads. If those are the nice rods, someone will be able to bend them for you and buff out the job real nice.

"Rolled" threads are a fairly new methodology. Since the guitar is almost 50 years old, I feel pretty confident they used cut threads, and would agree that it would be easier to cut and re-bend the top hooks than to cut and rethread the rods.

On a side note, despite the marketing hype, there is nothing "superior" about rolled threads. It's just a cheaper and faster way of creating threads which has the side benefit of leaving no chips or waste cutting fluids to dispose of. I worked for many years in the aircraft industry and saw nothing but bad experiences with screw products that had rolled threads.