1970 6139 Sho-Bud Pro 1

[Aaron Oster]

Hey All,

I have a 1970 6139 Sho-Bud Pro1 set with 3 pedals and 4 knee levers. I'm comfortable working on this myself, but would love to know if there are any resources to help understand what factory settings would have looked like. I bought this used from reverb a couple years ago, the return springs on the right knee lever were already gone, so I'm trying to replace what's missing and reset things to understand where the base line is. I'm not totally sure how the whole rack and barrel system is designed to work, specifically if the barrels need to be flush and tightened up against the racks holding the tuning rods, or if they should be loose. My B pedal is sticking pretty bad, so I've installed an aux tensioning spring to help bring the pedal back to its open position, but i'm just not sure if what i'm doing is making things worse or better. I live in Western Massachusetts and no one either available to look at this thing, or knows what to do.

Please help, i'm loving learning this instrument but don't want to build bad habits and possibly destroy a great steel.

[Ricky Davis]

There is just way too much to type to explain all I know; and best set up wasn't particularly the way it came off the floor at Sho~bud. But just the B pedal thing your 3rd string not returning....simply tighten the return spring that is holding the lowering for that finger; at the phillips head screw at endplate; all the way; since you are not lowering the 3rd string; the tighter that lower return spring is; the better the raise section can move. But also there is about 8 other moving points along the line starting with pushing the pedal...all the way to where the string raises...you have to check all those out.
......etc.
Ricky

[Aaron Oster]

OOF! Thank you, this is great, I'll work on this tonight and send some updates if that's okay. Do you think that a return spring is even necessary then?

Also can I ask, should the spring tensioners all be at the same height? They're kind of all over the place.

Thank you!

[Ricky Davis]

Yes I was only talking about the return Springs that hold the fingers in place by holding the lower section. the raise springs section actually has little flimsy Springs on them that hook to a little bracket on the bottom of the guitar some of those aren't really needed and if you're talking about the retention Springs that are mounted on the racks that are pulled that's a different return spring those are not really needed but when you say return spring that's usually always referred to as the lower return spring that is hooked on to the bottom of the changer and tightened with a Philips screw at the end plate that goes into the spring and tightens the tension of it.
So if you do have questions about certain parts in certain areas calling them the right thing is very difficult because they're called several different ways so pictures make a big difference.
Ricky

[Aaron Oster]

Thank you Ricky.

This is super helpful. Thank you so much!

Aaron