The British Steelies Society

I have now taken delivery of this lovely ZB, and it has tone to die for, however, i have to change the two outer pedals over, and i have never done this before, and i have a gig on saturday, so that only gives me tomorrow night to do it, and i dont know where to start, or how to go about it, i hope the pic of the undercarriage helps,

That's not the usual ZB undercarriage, so it might be quite straightforward, but you may run out of time.

A quick (but unsightly) fix would be to cross the pedal rods over, in other words one rod goes from the pedal nearest to the end of the steel and hooks to the crank furthest away from the end of the steel.

I've just measured my steel, and you would need about an extra 30 mm on the length of the rods, so your rods will probably be too short to be used diagonally.

No problem, get two pieces of strong wire and bend them into an 'S' hook (approx 30 mm long), and use them as extensions to go between the pedal rods and the underside of the steel

Another quick fix would be to disconnect the pullrod that goes from the 'C' pedal bellcrank to the 4th string.
This would allow you to use the 'C' pedal as the 'A' pedal, except that you wouldn't be able to raise string 10

Did this on my White guitar. I started by making a Rodding chart, i.e. a list of what goes where. Then take some photos on a digital camera. Finally, remove the pull rods from the C pedal first, then the A pedal. Then move the bell cranks to match the A pedal, and replace the rods in there new position for strings five and ten, and then move the C pedal bellcranks, replace rods on new position. Be aware you will need to retune the pulls for each pedal as the strings are different guages now. this is just trial and error. hope this all makes semse. Best of luck, it took me and my brother about three hours.

Richard / Jason, Thanks for the replies, you are quite right, i am getting timed out, as i have just finished a 12 hour day at work, and i have to work all day 2mo before my gig, so i like the sound of the quick fix, i am going to go with disconnecting the pull rod that goes from the 'C' pedal bellcrank to the 4th string, i can get by ok without the 'C' pedal, for 2mo anyway, Richard, as far as i know, this is the Tom Brumley model, i will post more pics when i get the chance, jason thanks for advice re mapping and good idea to use digital camera, thanks guys,

DID IT! Took me two minutes to disable, and ive had a good practice, the knee levers are not the way i will want them, but will just stick with using the E raise and E lower, keeping everything simple, just for tommorrows gig, then i will look at it again, will no doubt be seeking further help, will post a pic of guitar, would like to know a bit more about it, i believe as well as the under carriage being different to other ZBs, the body is a little shorter

Eddie if you go onto the US Steel guitar forum,go to the pedal steel section,look up ZB steel guitars please help ,there is quite a bit of info on page 90,then if you go to page 91 and scroll down i have put a thread on there on how to set up your system,it may help you.

Jimmy.

Thanks jimmy, ill look that up, im sure it will help, as i say, i'll get this gig out of the way then look at the bigger job, thanks a million, Eddie