A new bar experiment

[Haddock]

And here it is installed. Works great so I’d better think about the polished version soon. I know this is nothing to do with the original topic but blame Buddy. Next step is some kind of switching to select what the palm lever does. But before then, I suspect the arrival of my double ender will distract.....

[Jif]

Calum, that looks good

Yer probably gonna curse me but a lit up in my head reading Simons post. You have extra pedal slots your not using near the volume pedal. Could you install a dummy pedal next to the volume pedal that you could rig to act as a switch. Just a thought.

[Haddock]

That’s another nice idea Geoff! Wouldn’t do the loop thing though as I need to be able to be using volume pedal and any pedal knee combinations so palm lever (or Bluetooth bar) seems to be the way to go. The idea is that I can be happily (or miserably) playing along, hit on a riff I like and just capture it on the looper, in time, and play over the top. So far, its working nicely but will take practice and fine tuning of the lever.
Having said that, using the redundant pedal slots is a great idea for something.....
Another thought was a sideways switch on the volume pedal. This was quite common on the old home organ gadgets to play drum fills. Actually, there’s quite a lot of similarities between those abominations and pedal steel. Hands and feet all waggling in all directions. And I bet drummer technology has something to offer too..... Alternatively I could just find a band but the sheep aren’t very good at busking and are terrible singers.....
Cheers

[Jif]

There's bound to be a decent Baaaaass player in that there field

Bluetooth bar is a great idea, but difficult to make and tricky to use I would imagine. You would have to have at least one switch on the bar, I could see it being pressed accidentally, probably need more than one switch to make it worthwhile. Although the receiver could be programmed to be multifunction from a single keypress on the bar, so I suppose you could have patches or a sequence of patches set up to correspond to a set list or whatever.

In any case the circuitry would need to be housed within the bar and would need decent battery power which would need to be either charged or a change of batteries required. If only we could use a thought control device, which are being developed with some limited degree of success but could be a few lifetimes away.

On the pedal switch idea, it occurred to me that if you used a stereo output jack, the switch output could be connected out via the 2nd ring and a breakout cable used to split the pup out from the switch output, so no need to baaaaastardise the guitar.

[Donny Johnston]

LA LA LA LA GOBBLEDEGOOK LA LA LA

[Haddock]

Don’t listen to him Geoff. He’s just practicing with that voice box gadget he used to use on the steel and forgottten to stick the tube in.

[Jif]

Don’t listen to him Geoff. He’s just practicing with that voice box gadget he used to use on the steel and forgottten to stick the tube in.

I know the feeling

Sort of like the air pedal steel player

[Haddock]

Here’s the new bar, kindly made by Ben Burrows. Great workmanship and astonishing prices! As you can see, it fits between strings 1 and 2 and 11 and 12 meaning I can play a chord on the middle strings up the neck whilst playing a low open string. Going to require practice but it works and is really interesting. Feels like playing with a small stone in your hand.

[Jif]

Cool Calum. Need to try yours and if I like it will probably add one to my collection.

Just need to get the bluetooth in there now