The British Steelies Society

Hi guys,
I'm 43, have played guitar and bass most of my life. Currently playing upright and electric bass in a 50s style blues band, Gentleman Tim and the Contenders.
I bought a sd10 around 10 years ago, missing it's legs and pedals and a bit of a mess underneath. I have very slowly been making parts for it and finally have it in a state where it's playable but certainly not finished. It is now 3x5 emmons setup (I think!)
I have a lot to learn but have managed to get some very nice sounds out of it.
Looking forward to learning what it is/was as well as suggestions on what I can do to improve it.
I have photos, not sure if this is the right section to post them?

Look forward to meeting you all.

Simon

Here's a few pics

A couple more. The changer is an interesting design, Ive not seen another one like it. Probably not ideal but I've persisted with it as it seems to work well enough while I'm learning the instrument. The cross rods and adjustable bell cranks on left knee are my work as well as the stop nuts with stainless adjusters on the pullrods. It's very much a work in progress

Hi Simon, welcome to the forum. That’s an interesting beast you have there, any idea of the history? Is the changer pull/release?

So many questions

I'm sure some of the experienced guys here will probably recognise the builder etc. That's a lot of work you've done there, you must have done a lot of research to take something like this on.

Hope you are enjoying playing it

I have no idea on the history, I'm hoping somebody on here can point me in the right direction.
The woodwork and castings have been very well made and a very long time ago by the looks of things.
Most of the hardware looks decidedly more home made.
The changer fingers are pictured below, they are very basic but seem to work well enough. There is only one pull rod attachment point for each raise and lower so on the few occasions that more are needed, the pull rod just passes through the bell crank and on to the next. hence the importance of adjustable stop nuts.
I'm guessing this makes it pull release? as all the pull rods do just that, they never have to "push"?

Hi Simon, I'm surprised none of the more experienced players have not chipped in yet. There are basically 3 types of changer mechanism that I'm aware of, push/pull, pull/release and all pull. Most steels these days are all pull, in other words both raises and lowers use a rod to pull a finger in the changer, raise fingers being separate to lower fingers. Push/Pull seem to be almost exclusively original Emmons. Pull/release is not a common method and tends to be in cheaper student models etc.

My first steel was a GFI student model which was pull/release, for the love of me I cannot remember exactly how they work, it was about 12 years ago. I think they use the same finger to raise and lower, so in a sense they are push/pull. Someone will likely correct me, but I think if a finger is both lowering and raising the non-engaged finger sits between the 2 states and if you raise it pulls the finger and if you lower it pushes the finger back towards the changer side of the steel.

I do remember it had quite a nice tone and others have also said this. Not sure if that is how yours is setup, anyway as long as it works well and sounds good, that's the main thing.

It would be interesting to hear how it sounds

Many thanks for the info John.
Is there any way I could contact Dave Nixon to confirm that it's one of his? And to see how it looked originally?
I think the changer design is far from optimal but I don't want to start cutting the end plate to make it all pull if it may be rare or valuable or sentimental to someone.
So far I have done nothing that isn't reversible other than a few screw holes on the underside.
My prototype parts have proved that it does work, and it will work even better when I build the proper parts with better tolerances.

Jif, I think it sounds great but I don't have anything else to compare it to, and my playing ability is so limited that I don't want to embarrass myself by posting a video yet!

Hi Simon, yeah, I get it, we've all been there. It does take a while to learn this instrument to a level that we are happy with, especially if you're an accomplished guitar player already. Good that you're enjoying playing it, it is the most addictive instrument once you get the bug.