The invisible knee lever

[Haddock]

I wonder if anyone else out there has discovered the invisible knee lever that is fitted to many guitars as standard but not always obvious, mainly because its invisible. I note that none of the instruction manuals refer to it. This only works if you have a standard setup with E’s raised and lowered on the left knee and a vertical lever dropping your B’s. I’ve been using it for some time now but it does take a little adjustment to get right and may involve moving the position of LKR until it fits your knee. Also the rates of change on both LKR and LKV are critical, much the same as timing the A and B pedals so some moving of cranks might be needed. Anyway here’s the just of it. Left knee to 9 o’clock raises your E’s, 3 o’clock lowers them. LKV at high noon drops the B’s but it’s at 1.30 that Left Knee Invisible (LKI) comes into its own. With A and B down, sliding into LKI gives you a lovely dim7th chord, even better if you drop a fret on the bar at the same time. It has the advantage over the dim7 that uses just raised E’s in that it can actually be tuned in just intonation and the notes are grouped together in a much more pleasing way. It is possible to get the same effect using a half A pedal but I’ll leave that one to the Jedis!
Here’s a nice sequence using it:
A+B fret 7
A+B+I fret 6
LKR fret 5
A+B+I fret5
Open fret 5
A+B+I fret 4 slide up to 7 and finish on A+b

Nice on strings 8 through to 4 but others work too.

If just one person tries it, my work is done!
Cheers
Calum

[Danny Mitchell]

Duly noted, Calum, your work is done. Thank you.

[LittlePickins]

Thanks Calum, will give that a try.

I thought that the pedal A+B+V would give you a minor of the pedalled chord. Am I incorrect?

PS love the half A pedal

cheers

[Haddock]

Hi Tim
I probably didn’t explain this very well. Yes A + B + V will give you a minor 6th but the ‘invisible lever’ means you’re using A+B+V+LKR which is the nice diminished 7th. It’s just how my twisted mind works....
Cheers
Calum

[LittlePickins]

Hi Calum
Thanks for the clarification, much appreciated
Cheers
Tim

[blueherring]

I agree that that dim chord is better than the F lever one, but it still can't be tuned in JI - no dim can. Four stacked just minor thirds are bigger than an octave by about 7 cents. The musical purpose of a dim chord is to be tonally uncommitted and inherently dissonant.

The way I tune, strings 5, 6 and 7 will be just, and 4 and 8 wild. If you don't have compensation on 7, that would be the wildcard.

I lower Es on RKR, so I don't need to do Calum's trick!

Ian Rae