The Steel Guitar Forum

Carl, Inquiring minds want to know!!! Have you broken your 3rd string on your keyless yet??? And how old is it??? Tom

Tom,

The 3rd string is still on there! I received the Guitar April 5th last year. That makes it almost 16 months now. I play it from 2 to 10 hours a day.

It defies all logic almost, how the guitar simply does NOT break strings. I have been chided, ridiculed and subtly maligned for stating it, but the fact remains this type of changer simply cures the problem of premature string breakage.

Also, I am fully awar that NO one including me, would never leave a string on that long IF they were playing gigs. I don't play out, so it doesn't matter. I am simply going to leave it on there just to see how long it can last without breaking.

One thing for sure. Changers that don't bend the string to change pitch prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that a string can be stretched 1000's and 1000's of times more than changers that do bend the strings.

And the fact that I am unable to detect even the slightest intonation problem (scale changes), just amazes me.

God bless you,

carl

I bet it sounds pretty funky by now, though.

Carl, Thanks for the reply. You must have one-of-a-kind. The most I can get is three or four weeks playing weekends and practicing weekdays. I'm curious if any other steel players on the Forum here can get that much mileage from their keyless. How 'bout it steel pickers?

I got an Excel keyless S10 last April (2000) so mine is nearly as old as Carl's, But I haven't played it nearly as much as Carl has
played his! (Shame on me!) Also I must confess I tuned it to C6 after I got it. It
came as an E9 of course, who ever heard of any one so old they would play C6 on a S10?
I don't expect the breakage w/C6 & there hasn't been any.

Moved to Pedal Steel.

Carl,

I think you have a .022" plain string in that third position, under very, very extreme tension ...just kidding.

I think that the pulling action of your changer does not change the string length (scale) enough, to be detectable as out of tune on any of the fret positions.

The flexing of the string makes me think that left there long enough, it will eventually break. And it makes sense that the rolling bridge on most guitars bending the string will cause the string to break sooner.

I see it this way:
On the rolling bridge the radius is so small, the bonding of the atoms (in the string metal) on the top of the string is being stressed further than the bonding at the bottom and resting against the arc of the bridge,___greater distance on top of the arc.

When a string is pulled in a linear direction only, the stress on the bonding of the atoms in the string metal is about equal all through the diameter and length of the string.

Although this is only one factor to consider in building a pedal steel guitar, I really do expect other current builders to start using this type of changer in the future.

Rick