The British Steelies Society

Some pics of my new pride and joy which arrived yesterday. Only problem was it was a uni set up and that's not for me. So a deep breath, chant the mantra 'how hard can it be' and pick up the tools. I naively assumed I could do it a bit at a time - swop the E's to the left knees first for instance. No chance! Pretty much had to take all the rods off apart from a few to keep things in line and then rebuild from scratch. Very successful and its all playing in tune, splits and all. Left one pedal for 'future development.
Now just need to learn to play it......

Cheers

Calum
Was the ball peen hammer used for " hammer on's " or " hammer off's" or is the work just harder without one?
No doubt a few sleepless nights lie ahead figuring out how to get to grips with playing it and more to the point, what can you do with the extra pedal , although I believe the Clyde is quite deep near you!
Will you have mastered it for Gartcosh on Tuesday night?
Looking forward to hearing it,
cheers
Robert

A bit too soon to fling it in the sea yet Robert! The hammer nicely forms the slight round in the end of a rod. I had it down to only the four pedals for about an hour but couldn’t help myself.
Might try for Gartcosh but haven’t learned any of the tunes and cant quite play this machine yet but WTF......

Wow, that does look like a lot of work, Calum

As I sit here in my underpants, sipping on a room temperature Velvet Elvis, I doff my bunnet and raise the glass to the tenacity of you boffin types. Huzzah!

Not so much a boffin, just a guy wanting to play a few wee tunes! Trickiest part was getting my string 5 sorted out. I use pedal 4 to do the Franklin style lower of a tone which I can also use to cancel out the raise on pedal 3 and get 4 raising a tone on its own. So this required a tunable split but so does the vertical lever drop of a semi tone. The answer was to fit an extra rod for one of the splits and use the built in one for the other. Worked out well!
Also if it helps anyone else, I found that the raise helper spring setting is quite critical for certain string lowers. Too much tension and the string just wont go far enough.

Cheers

Haddock wrote:Not so much a boffin, just a guy wanting to play a few wee tunes! Trickiest part was.............

Haha! And that's where you sailed into the sunset and lost me
I'll wager it sounds the business

Danny - recipe, please, for a Velvet Elvis!
Hats off to you Haddock. Having just had to remove about 6 rods from my Ben-Rom to correct a couple of problems, I was in a bit of a panic as to what went where. I found a hacksaw to be the complete steeler's 'all-in-one' tool. I've now got a 5th string raise on every pedal!!!

Nick Bidmade wrote:Danny - recipe, please, for a Velvet Elvis!

Happy to oblige, Nick.
Equal amounts of Jack Daniels and Chambourd, and soften up with Lemon/Lime soda and ice.

BUT round these here parts....... substitute Buckfast for the Chambourd and soften with American Cream Soda, strictly no ice.
Not to be taken when the hacksaw's out.

All I can say about all of the above is this, Callum has been playing steel for approximately three years, he bought this beautiful guitar from John Roche, stripped it down to penny numbers and completely altered the copedent from Universal to extended E9. I had the good fortune to play said guitar at our monthly workshop last night and what a fantastic job he has done.
The guitar plays great and some of the changes are to die for.
Balls of steel or what?
Great job Callum
Asleep at the steel

I honestly believe that the 'pedal steel' is the most labour intensive instrument ever devised, thank god it sounds so fantastic.