The British Steelies Society

Hi guys, been a while since I've shared any progress on rebuilding my David Nixon sd10 so I thought I'd share some updates. my experimental round pedal bar has been working flawlessly so I'm making another couple of pedals to possibly add to it in the future.
the lower parts of the changer fingers were made from sheet aluminium which was starting to wear and bend causing changer fingers to stick, so I have rebuilt the lower finger linkages in stainless along with the bracket that the the notches sit on.
I made new finger uppers from brass to hopefully improve tone and sustain and it all seems to be working very well.
next step is to finish off a few more bellcranks and a few other bits to go on the crossroads and then I can bolt the whole undercarriage in, all the crossroads are on bearings mounted to rails on the front and back apron, so all I have to do is mount the rails to the guitar and can make the least amount of new holes.

here's some really awful playing to show it in action before I pull it apart yet again.

no input from anyone?

I haven’t heard of this male before. Is it British? Sounds good to me!

Dave Nixon from Luton

Thanks Dessa!

Another quick update, I wasn't happy with the size of the crossrod bearings, they may have prevented the crossrods being close enough together around the pedal/left knee area so I have spent many hours on the milling machine making new needle bearing holders. They have a tongue on the back and a T nut to fit the rail, so can be positioned anywhere on the guitar and easily removed/installed as necessary.

Dessa, do you know if it is possible to contact Dave Nixon? Is he still with us? I would love to see how this guitar looked originally.

from an engineering perspective, there is a flaw with the taller crossrod holders for the far side of the guitar. The bolt should be on the other side of the bearing for better force distribution. And I could have cut a relief into the "foot" to allow more room for a bellcrank or whatever else is on the crossrod. All is not lost however, if I'm not short of space I can simply reverse the crossrod holder or use them on the nearside of an S10.