Carter U12 Flush & Teflon Lube

[U_twelve]

Excellent! worth posting on the US forum perhaps or maybe just a link to here.

Must show this to the wife. She´s in charge of the cleaning
atb
Pete

[Jif]

Surprisingly my wife declined this particular cleaning job, although she did supervise

Cheers Pete, I did put a link in a similar thread on the USA forum, not sure if they noticed it

[Nick Bidmade]

Following Geoff's really helpful description and photos, I took the plunge yesterday - there's something counter-intuitive about pouring liquid into the changer, but I went ahead. I was amazed at how much muck and fine metal 'dust' emerged. I cleaned the pedal bar, all of the bell-cranks and the rollers. Re-lubed, new set of strings and - blimey - a big difference. Smoother pedal action, some of the hex nuts needed to be slackened off once I'd re-strung and tuned up. There seems to be more sustain, too! The only down side is the grub screw that holds the pedal bar 'crank' in place sheared the thread on the retaining 'gizmo' when I was putting it back, so I've had to put a small jubilee clip over one end of the pedal bar rod to keep the pedals in place. At some point I'll have to find a local engineer who can re-drill and re-thread and fit a new grub screw.
Overall though, a success and something I'll have no fears about next time!
Thanks again, Geoff.

[Jif]

Great that it went OK Nick, Your results confirm what I found myself, so it wasn't just my imagination

[rayellis]

Great post.Thank you.

[Dave Nutt]

Geoff, great post, well put together,very informative, little tips that give us all food for thought.
Who did your backing track for Over the Rainbow?
Dave.

[Jif]

Cheers guys.

Dave I got the backing track from here,

http://www.jazzbacks.com/cgi-bin/online-store?pg=cat&ref=st-somewhere-over

I shortened it from the original in a audio editor.

[Jif]

Hi Guys,

Update on this.

I've noticed that as the weather gets a bit warmer my tuning and action is getting a bit sticky, not terrible but annoying at times. Up here the temperature has been up and down like a yo yo the past month and I've noticed that in cooler periods the guitar keeps better tune and plays better, when it gets hot it's been a bit temperamental.

So I came to the conclusion that the general expansion of parts is to blame and that due to the age of the guitar the parts might not be expanding in a uniform fashion and a bit of light oil might be a good idea!

I've applied some Singer Sewing machine oil to the cross shafts and this has improved the problem, I haven't put oil on the changer just yet, I'll see how it goes first. Perhaps the mechanisms on this guitar are too old to rely on the Teflon coating alone, in any case the cleaning has worked out well even if I have to go back to oil for lubrication.

Geoff

[Nick Bidmade]

Hi Geoff. I followed your detailed descriptions to re-lube my old Sho-Bud but have to say I'm not now having the problems you describe. I do have the central heating on low in my music room so maybe there is less fluctuation in temperature but my pedal steel is holding tuning far better than it did prior to the teflon re-spray (!) and playing pretty smoothly. It's a treat not having to go through a full tune-up every time I sit down to play.

[Jif]

Hi Nick,

That's good that your OK. I think that my steel is maybe just a bit old to work well with the teflon, parts a bit worn and not totally true kind of thing. I gave in the other night and lubed the changer with sewing machine oil and the steel is playing really sweet again, so...

Think I also probably need to renew my tuning pegs which look like the originals.

Anyway, it's playing better than before I gave it the flush and is a lot cleaner underneath, so worth doing in any case.