Adding a 4th (poss 5th) pedal to E9

[Danny Mitchell]

Hey! Calum! Raise your hands up, slowly, and step away from the upturned contraption!

The van from the Sanatorium will arrive shortly

[Haddock]

You may be required to testify in the parole hearing Danny Mitchell! You are guilty of steering me towards Franklin and Siegler. Sadly I’ve already used too many holes in the changer tuning splits etc so its Siegler that wins the day and I may have to pass the fith pedal on to another sad tweaker out there.....

Cheers
Calum

Then again, perhaps digital is the way to go........

[Danny Mitchell]

Ha Ha! Guilty as charged

[Will C]

Boolean logic and steel guitar... who'd ha' thought it? I love the idea of the mechanical "AND" gate. Nice one Calum.

[bob adams]

You ran out of changer holes yet Calum???

You do realise if you were one of us 'auld farts' with an Emmons Push Pull you could have 'potentially' eighteen changes per string, only if you felt that way inclined of course!
By that I mean eighteen raises and eighteen lowers as every string can be raised or lowered by any pedal or lever on the guitar due to the 'common rail' design!

Thirty six possible actions per string, for goodness sake! Enough to keep you awake at night is it not!? I believe you started this thread so I can't be blamed for causing undue anxiety!

Have I boggled your mind yet! I believe not !!!!........... Like you I am simply planting seeds!

I 'really' look forward to seeing and hearing the result of your new moves!

It is wonderful to think there are deep cauldrons being patiently stirred in the castles of steel playing Merlins in the most secret of places!..... Simply wonderful .... Keep it coming!

[Haddock]

Thanks for that Bob. Spent the small hours reading about push pull! Fascinating stuff and great design. I wonder why the all pull seems to have turned PP into the Betamax of steel?
To answer the question, not quite run out of holes yet but running close. Hopefully I can settle down again after this flurry is over. Though guess who bought the Truetone pickup........

Cheers
Calum

[RonMc]

I think Bob's 'avatar' is a form of 'mechanical AND gate'.

[Haddock]

Thanks to everyone who chipped in ideas, many off forum.

Here’s what happened.

I didn’t want to make any changes for the hell of it. it had to be something I would use. Despite trying to have an open mind and look at this objectively, gravity kept pulling me towards what the Americans seem to call the ‘modern’ copedent. And I’m pretty close to that now despite my radical intentions. Just seems to be the right thing to do and there are many Brian’s better than mine putting thought into this.

I’ve got basic Emmons. A and B pedal do what you expect. C also does the usual except I added a drop of a tone on 10. (This WAS done for the hell of it when I had a crank left over but now I couldn’t live without it.....). Left knees are dedicated to the E’s as you’d expect.


RKL does a half and full raise on 1 and a 0 and a half raise on 2. At the same time it’s doing a half and full drop on 6. I’ve set the 2 raise to the hardest setting so that it works as a feel stop but I also added an adjustable half stop to make it more reliable. RKR does the usual half and full drops on 2 and the 0 and half drop on 9 (also set to be quite hard) but it also raises 7 a half and a full step. All the right knee stuff just seems to make sense and also sort of mirrors whats going on on the left knee but with added weirdness. I reckon that the standard set up is great for the diatonic scale but these extra half steps open up loads of chromatic options especially in the middle strings. Its adding several ways to play minor and major thirds in quick succession, either 7 raised or 6 lowered. Also I can now play a minor with half RKL alone. I've got a tunable split on full RKL with B but suspect when I get used to the new setup I'll not need it. Having a lot of fun with it all!

And that brings me to the extra pedal. Danny suggested that most folk would add the Waldorf and Statler pedals for 4 and 5. Well, I realised that I was running out of space to put pull rods so tried both by retuning and decided it would be the Siegler (drop 9 a tone and raise 4,5 and 6 a half). Went to a lot of trouble to get it fitted and was very pleased with myself. Then I couldn’t understand why it didn’t drop 3 as well so fitted that too. All good! Except that within 24 hours I realised that the whole change was almost the same as dropping the E’s which I have since seen pointed out elsewhere on the forum. Ooops!

So all of that got switched off and I started looking for a new idea. Tried a load of different pulls until I started thinking about how to create a useful C and D pedal combination (not to be confused with a D lever). So after much tweaking I have settled on dropping 5 a tone and 9 a half tone. C and D down gives me maj 13th flavours and slipping up to a half C with D is a half diminished. And lots of other options. Plus I really like the tone drop on 5 for improvising. And as an alternative to B and C it gives some suspended options.

Now I’m at the sawing a leg of a table bit trying to get them all to move together as I want. Much harder than what I was doing today which was sawing the legs of an actual table to level it for building a skiff!

Will be listing the bits for a 4th pedal for sale as I need to get them out of the house in case I have any more good ideas.....

Cheers
Calum

[Danny Mitchell]

Great, comprehensive update on your copedent adventures Calum I'm looking forward to hearing the fruits of your labours, and sincere apologies for sending you down the cult de sac, that shall be henceforth known as Sigler's Alley

[Haddock]

No apology required Danny. It was the best fun I’ve had yet on the ‘wrong side of the steel!’ Learned a lot and there’s not much I wouldn’t tackle now with confidence. (Helper springs! I don’t think so!) And sitting there with 5 pull rods all set up ready to go and trying to decide what to do was special....... One of the best things about playing an instrument that is far from ‘traditional’ is you can still move the goals. Imagine what they would say if you wanted to change the way a piano worked?

Cheers