I'm a new member, I've just started learning the Pedal Steel in the last couple months.
Pedal Steel Guitars are pretty hard to come by here in Australia but my long time want to learn this beautiful instrument spurred me on to find one.
I picked up - what I'm lead to believe is a Fender S10. Sho-Bud built early 70s model S/N: 01240
I have a friend here in Sydney that plays some really beautiful steel. He gave me some pointers on his instrument and I quickly realised that my instrument wasn't just a little off in setup, It was way off!
Being new to the world of playing pedal steel, I wasn't going to blindly jump into making adjustments and changing the setup. I did a bunch of research, much of which I found through this forum - Thank you!
I learned how to make small adjustments to firstly get my pedal steel in tune and then to work out how the pedals and levers had been set up on the instrument.
This one has 3 pedals and 4 levers.
I persevered, trying to work out the intention for how this pedal steel had been set up. The owner before me never really got around the instrument and couldn't really shed any light on the matter.
The pedals were set up as you would expect in Emmons style although the action, stops, tuning were a long way out. The knee levers were a different story.
LKL and RKL were in the ball park of the "E raise" and "F# to G#" but the LKR lowers were way off and really sloppy.
The RKR was working on a couple strings (I don't remember now) and also very loose. I couldn't find any match anywhere for that setup - which would be fine if I knew what I was shooting for and I'm sure whoever had it set up in the first place had it set that way for good reason and it worked for them but this instrument was now sorely due for some maintenance.
I found that the screws mounting the LKR and RKR mechanisms had worn away the timber. I plugged and re-drilled the the mounting holes and everything came back together nice and solid.
After a lot of reading and trying to work out a good baseline to work from, I decided to use the copedent setup below:
I adopted this table format from a post I found in the forum - thank you, I don't remember who posted it originally.
I evened out the action of the pedals and levers to where, in my limited experience, and at least for this instrument, feels like a medium to fast action with a medium weight in the feel.
My questions to you now would be:
1: Do you think that this copedant setup is practical for a beginner? When I eventually upgrade, I want to avoid having learned too many awkward habits
2: As a beginner, apart from obviously doing a lot of listening and playing, what are some things I should be practicing specifically? I already play regular 6 string guitar and have a reasonable knowledge of chord theory and harmony - I can always learn more though!
As a final note, thanks to anyone who has stayed with me this far! As I mentioned, I am also a guitar player and I am an audio engineer. I work out of a recording studio here in Sydney. I am aware there is already a wealth of knowledge and experience here but I would like to offer my own skills and experience to any of the folks here as well, in a kind of way to try and "pay it forward". So if you have any audio questions, comments or would like something recorded or mixed or to just talk music generally, just reach out, I'd be happy to get touch.
Cheers
Sam
