The Steel Guitar Forum

We have been working on a proto-type old time Do-Wah pedal. The kind where the top moves from side to side. The guys out doing the machine work in our factory have ask me some questions. I think the old Do-Wah pedals moved in only one direction. What was that left or right? What if it worked in the oposite direction? What if it worked in either direction? None of the old Do-Wah pedals would return to center when you removed your foot. Would it be a good feature if the pedal went back to center when your foot was removed? Should there be a stop to hold the side to side top in place, just in case you didn't want to use the Do-Wah side to side movement? Any other mechanical suggestions would be appreciated.

Hi Keith- It is nice to see a MFG asking the customers what they want.

I had Rocco Tone Expressor back in the 40's and it worked great!
I had a d8 and stood up to play with my right foot on the pedal.

It had a sliding adjustable foot stop on each side so any size foot could be fitted.

The stops worked better than my later Bigsby vol/tone control, which had no side brackets to hold the foot steady.

It was , of course, much smoother and easier and more accurate to use than my Bigsby. It kept the foot from sliding off when you went from side to side.

I am not very good at explaining mechanical things. It had clik stops you could feel with the foot, Left, Middle , and right, so in that respect it wasn't seamless smooth. However I played it a lot and it was VERY EFFECTIVE. It worked!

The tone was standard left for bass and right for treble. I wish I had kept it, but it would be about 53 years old now!!!

I hope you can make one with your new pedal, I think it would be a very good seller.

But remember to put those little side brackets on. The Rocco had bass left, normal middle, treble right. By moveing fast from left to right, I could make it talk, just like Alvino Rey did, also great for Doo wah.

Go to it and good luck! I'll take one...al <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Al Marcus on 26 June 2001 at 09:59 PM.]</p></FONT>

Hi Keith. Appreciate your interest. I have used Bigsby for 50 some years. The tone on the pedal is treble all the way to the left and bass to the left. I have never had a problem with my foot slipping off the pedal. The top of the pedal is covered with a striated rubber pad. I always play with the pedal in the full left position and swing right for the doo-wah effect. I have an extra pedal if you need one to look at for ideas.
Sincerely
Bob Thomas

Thanks for the information. Robert I'm a little confused. You said bass left and trebble left. How could that be?

Keith:
I have several Fender and Bigsby pedals that I use and to me the most important thing is having the proper taper to get the right sound. I'm always messing with different pots and capacitors to get the right sweep. I know this is adjustable on some wah-wah pedals so that might be a nice feature. The way my pedals work is pedal to the far right is full treble and the unaffected sound that would come from my amp straight trough. I move the pedal first to the far left (full bass) and then to the right to get the do-wah effect. When no effect is needed the pedal always stays far right (and never centered, which is kind of no-man's land). I always though it would be nice to have the travel cut in half so less foot movement would be needed. If the pedal straight on could be the full treble, unaffected sound, with the left movement the same, I think that would be a good thing. I could never get the taper right on my pedals to be able to cut the movement in half though. When you describe a pedal returning to center automatically it makes me think that the full treble position is going to boost the treble from the normal amp setting. I don't think this is the right approach for the do-wah effect and will put the sound more in the wah-wah realm. The sound should more mimic the use of a quick taper tone control on the guitar--full mud to normal bright tone in a quick movement. I hope this makes sense?
Thanks for taking on the project.
DD

Keith--

Thanks so much for taking on this problem. Something I have done with one of my Bigsby volume pedals may be of interest to you.

If you attach one end of a spring to a midpoint at the rear of the housing, and drill two holes on either side of the large diameter string pulley wheel, you can make the side-to-side action default back to either side. I use the right-left as a separate midi volume controller, so I have set it to default to the left, or OFF. So unless I deliberately move the pedal to the right, I am defaulting to pure steel volume with the up-down movement. The center position halfway down gives me, say, a midi + horn blend, and all the way up and to the right is pure midi.

However, I could create a kind of center default setting by attaching a spring to each of the two holes in the pulley. For purposes of a vol/tone application, if the spring tensions were adjustable (in contrast with my low-tech wire cutter methods), the "detent" right-left setting could be adjustable.

I am thinking, though, that simpler would be better. Maybe something along the lines of a center spring tone detent that the user could remove if he preferred a regular style action, with the tonal center adjustable right-left with a knob.

It always sounds so easy when it's somebody else doing the work....

Thanks for your contributions to this instrument we all love.

Mylos <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Mylos Sonka on 29 June 2001 at 11:31 AM.]</p></FONT>

Keith, it's great you're asking. I'd be very interested in such a pedal.

I find myself in complete agreement with Dana Duplan's reasoning - the key being that the center position ought to be your full treble, or "normal" tone position, left rotation (counter-clockwise) would give full bass, and the rotational angle from stop to stop ought to be fairly small - say no more than 35 degrees from stop to stop. The ability to adjust the taper would be a big plus for me too.

Al Marcus, with great respect for your experience, knowledge and talent - those clips sound nice in the application you cited, but suppose you're playing pedal steel in the seated position and you want to lift your right foot off the volume/tone pedal to mash a changer pedal - would it be easy to do that and bring it back to the volume/tone pedal with reasonable speed? Or would it take some sliding out and sliding back in something like those old roller skate toe holders?

I; being very interested in the persuit by you Keith, want to give you what I think> but the Great Dana Duplan pretty much stole everything that was gunna come out of my mouth onto this keyboard
It is used quickly and not that often; so the simpler but still ultimately effective, is the way to go my friend.
Ricky

Keith, I am very glad to hear you are working on this project.I own a Bigsby and a Fender pedal and agree with a lot of what Dana has said.A short travel distance is what would be most important to me.Being able to adjust the range of bass to treble doesn't seem that important to me but I like the option of being able to control the volume range from a pot on the side of the pedal.I would also be interested in a pedal that automatically returned to FULL OPEN position when your foot is removed.Having it return to the center position would be useless.It would also be great to have the option to switch the automatic return on and off as desired.Thanks for listening.

I liked what Ricky said, "The simpler, the better!" If we cut through everything, all these old time do-wah pedals did was turn a potentiometer, wired as a variable resistor. One end of this variable resistor came off the pickup input, and the other end went to a capacitor. It's just a tone control!
A common capacitor for tone control is .02uf
It appears that guys have altered these pedals to get what they want relative to full left, centered, or full right. Again left, right, or centered being relative to how the old potentiometer was wound. First of all let me say that my control won't have a potentiometer, and will therefore work like butter. It will have a infrared type control. I can make the thing do anything relative to left,right,centered, but I can see from the comments above that people would have to tell me how they wanted the movement. Everyone would want it to move the way they wanted. I agree that the taper sould be adjustable. Actually the taper is relative to the speed of movement. We have a experimental cam arm inside that can be set fast or slow. I am surprised that none of you have mentioned the importance concerning the location of the swivel point. Our experimental pedal has that point right under the arch, which falls slightly behind the volume hinge point. I agree with what Ricky Davis said. This is not going to be a Wah-Wah pedal, but a foot operated variable tone control.

From what I've read and heard, to get the quick do-wah sound, a linear taper is needed rather than an audio taper.

"The sound should more mimic the use of a quick taper tone control on the guitar--full mud to normal bright tone in a quick movement."
This is exactly what is needed.Adjustable taper and "variable tone control" are of little use for making the doo-wah sound.

Keith,
When I ordered my Bigsby pedal, Paul asked me if I wanted a Bass right or a Bass left.
I did'nt know what he meant and he explained to me that some want their pedals to go bass to the left and to the middle is their regular tone and others want their pedal bass
right and in the middle is regular tone,
or treble as some mention. it was just a bass to treble pot and it didnt get any more treble than the tone you had on the guitar if you went past the middle position. It was kind of like the Emmons and Day set up on steel. Some players like it one way and some like it the other. It was a pretty simple set up. Seems like some players would like for the pedal to do other things than just be a bass treble control. That would be nice but I don't think it would stay simple.
Norm

Sorry Keith. Full treble to the left and bass to the right. I always play in the full treble position. I have tried other pedals, but have never been satisfied with the sound. Bigsby has always given me the mellowness I like. Always looking for something better. From what everyone says, if your pedal had the tone option I sure would like to try one.

Norm, you cleared a lot of things up in my mind. I could not see how a tone control pot could cause a trebble boost in these old pedals! What you said cleared that matter up. There is "NO" tebble boost. Trebble means the tone contol is off. As you move the control, it gets more bass. That takes all the mystery out of it. With electronics you can build a trebble boost, but that's not what these old pedals did and I don't know why people seem to be confused. You have your normal sound, then you flip to full bass ,and back, to get the do wah effect. Just like turning a tone control on a guitar real quick with your finger. I was pretty sure a person had to order the way they wanted the top to swivel, from the factory. So that clears that up. Does anyone remember what the capacitor was? Was it a .02uf? When you come through Branson visiting your wife's folks in Harrison, Arkansas stop by and see me.

Bigsby pedals work well with a 100k audio taper pot and a .1 cap.
I don't think anyone was trying to imply that the pedal should be anything but passive.That's a given.The best thing to do would be to find an old Fender or Bigsby pedal and open it up.That should clear things up.Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my suggestions.I'm an idiot when it comes to electronics,but the doo wah sound is an important part of my playing.

Bob Kagy- good point, those toe holds might give some players problems , when moving from pedal with right foot, then back to vol pedal.

I don't recall my personally having any trouble with it, and I used both feet a lot on my old Electra-Harp, had no knee levers back then. But I had them set wider than my foot, it need not be tight. Then you could lock it in place. So when you hit the bracket either right or left one, it worked fine.

Yes Keith, it was just a tone control, just like I had on top.

I used to use my little finger on it for the doo wah, until I got the pedal.

It has to be, as many have mentioned, a quick bass to treble, not too graduated.

I found my brain likeing the bass (low) left and the treble (high) right. Just seemed natural that way. Doo left- Wah right.

I am glad to see you are working on it.

I had an old Bigsby vol.tone pedal But I didn't feel the change was quick enough. It was also too smooth and loose and the pedal moved sideways on me when I didn't want it too. Thus changing the tone. I believe my old Rocco tone expressor was gear driven, no strings. So it set in one place real good when foot came off it. Just a thought...al

If you incorporate that feature in your excellent new pedal, it should be a winner!.....al <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Al Marcus on 30 June 2001 at 09:44 PM.]</p></FONT>

Keith,
I seem to remember the Fender pedals using a .o5 uf capacitor on the tone control pot.
Bob

Keith.
How about a doo wa knee lever for those of
us that can't peddle and chew gum at the same time?
Jake Doell in Vancouver