The British Steelies Society

Hi all, just out of morbid curiosity, could anyone direct me to any useful diagrams or photos showing how a split raise/lower on the same string works please?
I've found some good stuff explaining the push/pull and all pull changer mechanisms but can't work out how the knee lever rod interacts with the pedal rod.
Many thanks for anything you can suggest,
Sid

hope this helps

Thanks John, that's great!

Hi again John, this may seem like a silly question, but when the pedal is pressed, would the knee lever rods go a bit slack? I am trying to understand the mechanism of raising a full tone using the pedal, and simultaneously lowering half a tone using the knee lever. Sadly all I have at present is a 60s Denley D8 which has solid changers that can be set to either raise or lower a given string, but it's very difficult to get them to do both! I've managed to get it to play adequately with RKL and pedal C connected to the same changer but it's not pretty
And the pedal overrides the knee lever so you can't get a half raise...
I idly wondered about machining some all pull changers of my own but think I'm better off just buying a more modern guitar! But at least now I have a copedent that matches the standard, so I can learn to play the thing and transfer that knowledge.
Thanks again for dealing with my possibly very silly questions!

Firstly Simon, where pedal steel is concerned there are never silly questions!

Some of us have been at this instrument for 40 years + and we are still learning some new tricks!

You think right! .... get yourself a pro spec guitar if you are serious about PSG.

There is a Red Sho-Bud Pro1 for sale on here at the minute... it would be a cracking guitar to perfect your craft on!
It has everything you need as a pro player!

As for the Denley .. Them were early days and whilst Morris Minors are still mega popular here they sometimes need and cranking handle! Work on it by all means but don't expect a profit when you sell it.

Thanks Bob,

To be clear, I am about as far away from pro status as it's possible to be on PSG - I did manage a year of pro guitar playing after graduating university, but didn't earn a lot...
I got the Denley as it was a.) cheap; and b.) available. Plus I was also considering a D8 non-pedal steel, so I convinced myself it was worth a go. And from that perspective I haven't bothered thinking about pedals on the C6 neck yet - but I did want to get the E9 neck to play the same way as a more modern instrument so that I don't need to learn it all again when I make the switch!
I've cobbled together the rods and changer on the higher E string to get a double raise from the pedal, and a half lower from RKL, so it's now good enough to knock out some tunes. Took some playing around to get spring tension and clearances right though - certainly this is off-script from the original design intent Your comment on the Morris Minor is spot on - and I recall I stopped dabbling with classic cars some years ago, precisely because I spent more time fixing them than driving them! With three evenings spent on the Denley so far, it now has new strings and the E9 neck is set up so that the pedals and knee lever (there's only one... ) work as they should. It needs one of the pickups looking at, but for now I figure I will probably stop trying to fix it and concentrate on playing the thing!
You make a very good point about making any profit from it - that was certainly never my intent when buying it, but as with classic cars I enjoy the challenge of getting it functional again. Sometimes there's as much enjoyment in tinkering with machines as there is in using them, but I must resist the urge and concentrate on playing it...

My plan is to get to the point on the Denley where I can play a few songs comfortably, and get a better feel for where the different chord inversions are up the neck, etc. I figure once I feel confident to play in public (I have low standards!) then it will probably be time to move to a more modern and reliable guitar.

Thanks again to all for your input - this forum is a wonderful source of useful information!

Richard Burton is the man to ask about this. he is expert on pull release steels