Why isn’t the Emmons counterforce industry standard?

[James Strelow]

I play a GFI expo that has some cabinet drop as do seemingly all steels and have had a bit of frustration trying to develop a tempered tuning that gets all intervals to sound sweet and in tune to my ear. After discovering the Lashley Legrande III and the counterforce mechanism to combat cabinet drop, this got me wondering why this never seemed to have caught on amongst modern steel builders? It seems like it would have been more revolutionary since from what I’ve read, it basically eliminates the cabinet drop factor. I’ve never played one to witness it firsthand, but from what I’ve read, the counterforce mechanism seems to do the job well and be relatively simple. Just wondering if anyone has any insight on this and why it seems to never have been picked up by any other brands of steel manufacturers?

[Jerry Overstreet]

Good question....but ZumSteel, Remington and several other builders had their own version of anti-detuning devices.

Perhaps some of them can give us more insight as to why it was eventually discontinued on all of them.

[Richard Sinkler]

My first guess would be cost.

#2 would maybe be patent infringement.

[Stew Crookes]

Some designs manage to avoid cabinet drop without requiring mechanics.

The cabinet drop on my Excel is so minor that I can only barely just see it on a strobe tuner - none of my other (+/- 1 cent accurate) tuners can detect it at all so it's presumably less than 1 cent

[Marco Schouten]

I have heard of some people who removed the counterforce because it made the guitar play stiffer. Also, even without cabinet drop, not all intervals will be in tune.

[Bobby D. Jones]

Why did the new Emmons Resound65 be reborn with the push/pull setup? If the Counterforce was so great.

The Counterforce was designed and used as a fix, For a design/engineering error in the guitar's original design.
The Changer shaft was to small and flexible, It bent when pedal pressure was applied to the pulls. All the Counterforce did, Was bend the changer rod back to tune. At the cost of pressure required to engage the pedals for pull and the Counterforce engagement.

With larger/stiffer changer shaft and comb design in changer support and anchorage is better and cheaper to install on new guitars.

[Jack Strayhorn]

Wrong

[James Strelow]

I find on my Expo that the drop on the 6th string is pretty significant so I have to compromise mostly on the A+F change to have the 5th string be a little out but have the A+B combination nicely in tune. I’m thinking of trying a wound 6th to see if this helps

[Jerry Overstreet]

The Counterforce was designed and used as a fix, For a design/engineering error in the guitar's original design.
The Changer shaft was to small and flexible, It bent when pedal pressure was applied to the pulls. All the Counterforce did, Was bend the changer rod back to tune. At the cost of pressure required to engage the pedals for pull and the Counterforce engagement.

With larger/stiffer changer shaft and comb design in changer support and anchorage is better and cheaper to install on new guitars.

No, that is not what Emmons stated. According to their description, the couterforce had nothing to do with the axle.

I have an ad for it here somewhere with all the info. I'll try to find it and post it here.

199_cabinet_drop_1.jpg

[Ian Rae]

What Stew says. My Excel has no audible drop and neither does my Williams. The keyword is "audible".
If you have a bunch of strings under tension and tighten one of them, then the frame they're on will distort slightly, causing the others to slacken. Modern instruments have reduced the effect and also kept the weight down - Excel and Williams are also two of the lightest guitars you can buy.

[J D Sauser]

Why isn’t the Emmons counterforce industry standard?


My Mom warned me "if you can't say something nice, better say nothing at all!".

So let me leave it at that about the Lashley-Emmons and other's pedal-actuated "Changer Axle BENDERS"... or call them "de-BENDERS"?.

Body Drop De-Tuning (henceforth "BDDT") happens from the pedal stops pulling downward either on the cabinet and and newer guitars, on the frame, to which most PSG's soundboard (aka. "cabinet") is usually firmly bolted to. The New Ross-Sierra is one of the few exceptions where the sound board is only held to the frame at both ends left and right, and it has much less BDDT as the sound board's center floats freely over the stressed frame.
I did the same on my 80's MSA and it has reduced BDDT drastically too. And it sounds better too (because the soundboard can vibrate more freely without "leaking" all the vibrations' energy to the frame->legs->floor, but that's another subject altogether).

Most PSG's with unsupported (so, unlike Carter, Sho-Bud, etc or knife edge models like BMI's and Klines) use a heat treated 1/2" steel axle. "Yeah! Go and bend that!" over such a short length... the string's pull but even more so, the tension changes from pedal and lever-actuations are negligible for such a heavy chunk of hardware.
And do the guitars which HAVE supported axles or wide knife-edge plates not have BDDT? Ah!

One needs to separate the soundboard from the stress of the frame, that's all.

... J-D.

[Tyler Hall]

I had a LL3 that I absolutely loved. Like, irrationally. But ask me what the absolute worst playing guitar I’ve ever tried to make myself love was.

The counterforce was a neat idea but not only did it play like a tank, it also presented problems with lowering 5 that had to be addressed. It did eliminate cabinet drop but it also caused more nuisances than a little cabinet drop. That was my takeaway and I’ve never felt compelled to own another one.

[Bob Carlucci]

How in the world did the pedal steel greats from the 60's, 70's, 80's etc, always sound wonderfully in tune without "anti detuners, compensators and all that stuff???.. Could it be because they played well, and were able to compensate with their hands for what they were hearing with their ears?... Same goes for todays electric guitars with compensated nuts, compensated frets, etc etc ad nauseum..

For thousands of years musicians learned to play their instruments properly, trained their ears and hands, century after century,decade after decade, year after year... Why not "compensate" violins, violas, geez, even upright basses so that they can't possibly sound out of tune also?... mechanical devices will NEVER compete with good hands, ears, and lots of time in the woodshed.. Thats what a steel player needs. I can't believe we are still discussing 'cabinet drop' or whatever its called in 2025.. No musical instrument is perfect.. However good hands ears and training can make them sound perfect. For every beautifully played, perfectly in tune pedal steel part played on a "compensated" guitar I would bet there are 500 played and sounding just as well on a plain old rickety pedal steel laden with "cabinet drop".... bob

[Greg Derksen]

I find the counterforce a bit of a pro and con, it works great , my other guitar is a very easy playing Franklin, and the LL3 is a bit of an adjustment, but surprisingly not as much as I would have thought, plays very well, not tough to press,

It’s better for most chord intervals but there are a few chords where the cabinet drop to my ear is actually a bit sweeter,
Again trade off , because most chords are
Better,

YMMV
Greg

[Ross Shafer]

While I've only been playing in the deep end of pedal steel design and construction for around 13 years and have specifically engineered the Sierras I build to address as many of the common "issues" (note the quotes) some players have with pedal steels. I wholly agree with and applaud Bob Carlucci's common sense post above. Kudos Bob!

[Tim Toberer]

To be honest I have never experienced cabinet drop as a real problem. My guitar probably does that. I also don't understand all the obsession around tuning in general, but I play In equal temperament and don't have anything near an E9 tuning. I use a cheap clip on tuner. I also agree with Mr. Carlucci. We still have to play these things, it is never gonna play itself. All the improvements in the world will never make you sound good if you don't practice. It is amazing what the early players did with such janky gear. At the same time I think builders should try to make the most functional instruments possible.

My issue with modern guitars is the difficulty in adjusting and changing the copedant. It is never gonna be an easy, cheap instrument to maintain, but anything that can make it easier I think would be an improvement. That said with the ever increasing complexity of the tunings and gear people seem to want (need?), that ship appears to have sailed. It is no wonder more people don't play this instrument.

[J D Sauser]

How in the world did the pedal steel greats from the 60's, 70's, 80's etc, always sound wonderfully in tune without "anti detuners, compensators and all that stuff???.. Could it be because they played well, and were able to compensate with their hands for what they were hearing with their ears?... Same goes for todays electric guitars with compensated nuts, compensated frets, etc etc ad nauseum..

For thousands of years musicians learned to play their instruments properly, trained their ears and hands, century after century,decade after decade, year after year... Why not "compensate" violins, violas, geez, even upright basses so that they can't possibly sound out of tune also?... mechanical devices will NEVER compete with good hands, ears, and lots of time in the woodshed.. Thats what a steel player needs. I can't believe we are still discussing 'cabinet drop' or whatever its called in 2025.. No musical instrument is perfect.. However good hands ears and training can make them sound perfect. For every beautifully played, perfectly in tune pedal steel part played on a "compensated" guitar I would bet there are 500 played and sounding just as well on a plain old rickety pedal steel laden with "cabinet drop".... bob

I think that just like with trucks from the 40's without synchronized transmissions and clutches that were stiff and long throw and people making a living driving them day-thru-nite anyways... players did cope with some crude, often even flawed designs of instruments because it was in it's time, the most modern thing until something -not always- but as history demonstrates in general better came along.
Musical instruments will ALWAYS be flawed because physics insists in giving us the stinky-finger in telling us that we will NEVER be really in tune.

How did people cope, back then?
I remember the first time I visited Maurice Anderson at his Grapevine, TX "forrest"-home (he had little "boats" carved out of wood in his pool, tethered to a line, from which he could pull in squirrels who had gone into the water and couldn't get out of the pool ), I looked at the wall in his music den and he had some pictures of the past. I had not known that he had started playing in the 50's and there was Mr. "Universal" depicted in black and white with a Fender non-pedal console and also with a double or triple neck Bigsby baring his name in the ominous lettering..
He commented that he HATED that guitar, because it's mechanics were "horrible" of the frets which were shaped in the original SAND-casting of the aluminum neck and were of uneven intervals. He said it was so bad, you could see the un-even spacing from afar and there were frets he had to look away and play "blind" not to get into distracted.
I asked how it sounded and he said it was GREAT... in other words HE still could play a storm out of it.

Not all "innovations" are successful, indeed a lot aren't or prove to create new sets of issues over time. That doesn't mean that innovations shouldn't be considered and given their fair chance.

I remember well, when the Emmons and Zum and I BELIEVE even Remington and/or Derby jumped on the BDDT-counterforce-"bandwagon", I was one who loved to buy guitars but looking at it and how it stiffened pedals at a time and age when most guitars had become most enjoyable to play after a painfully slow evolution from "clunky"-hillbilly mechanics, I walked away from being presented with these devices shaking my head.
Eventually many which had bit the bullet or pitch, came out pretty soon stating that they still had some of "it" (BDDT) and many wound up un-hooking it. Others swore by it... even thou most loudly when they were selling their axe.
THATs a phomenon anyways... barely unboxed "my new XYZ has virtually no BDDT!"... a year later it's up for sale and as soon they got another one... guess what they state again!

As to the BDDT-counter measures, I still think that separating the soundboard (or cabinet) from the downward stress caused to the frame by the pedals is the easiest and mechanically least invasive, least complicating approach to consider.
Still, the primary reason I always wanted to separate the soundboard from the frame or chassis, is to limit vibration-"bleeding" to the legs and from there to the floor.
If you can hear your PSG unplugged on a wooden floor, it's because your string's energy bleeds thru the legs so strongly that it makes de floor vibrate. It take ENERGY to make a floor move enough to that it moves enough air to hit your eardrums hard enough so you can hear your resonance-chamber-free PSG say "hello!"... all energy that gets subtracted from your dynamics and sustain.

Personally (since intonated bridges got mentioned here), I feel that when most 6-string instrument already have a "intonated" or "intonatable" bridges, an 8, 10 or 12 string instrument with an equal-scale length (which is by itself a problem inherently present on most if not all fingered string instruments) DEFINITELY would benefit from having that physical refinement or capability of an intonated or intonatable bridge.

I own several "Selmer"-style "Gypsy Jazz" vintage guitars... and the action is fairly high on those as they get played HARD. So, string-stretching from fingering action up and down the fret board affecting each string differently makes tuning these things fairly difficult.
ALL have a "propeller-warped" bridge and if you go a "Django"-gathering, one thing you will always find is some people selling or trading or even custom shaping bridges for the best intonation possible.
My trick? I fine-re-tune at the 7th fret... gives me a playable average, but still, al my guitars have a different "hand-fiddle with"-intonated bridge.

On PSG, it's a problem which becomes most noticeable within the upper half of the second octave of the scale length and we're clearly not all John Hughey-clones and even JH didn't play chords grabbed out of string 1-thru-10 "way out there" because our bass strings will be sounding like "wet cardboard"-dead compared to our treble strings. So, we've learned to live and some even make a living with a, in MANY aspects, far from perfect bridge.

Still, I am hell-bend to find a way to make a PSG with a near perfect bridge.

Would that be innovative? Most likely. Will it bring out new issues? Maybe!
Will the "industry" take it over and throw away a concept which has been carried over for now over half a century? I don't count on it.



(the spell-checker stubbornly refused to accept "intonated" and "intonable" or "intonatable" as a "Word", sorry, I can be stubborn too, at least until somebody shows me the right way to word my thoughts. That's an invitation.)
... J-D.

[Bob Hoffnar]

Those LeGrande III's are awesome sounding steels. I didn't ever notice any extra stiffness or problems with the counterforce and it really worked great. The tuning stability makes it so tuning "straight up" is consistent. It would be fantastic if that technology could continue. I would love to see a LeGrande III reissue at some point. My impression of why it's not an industry standard is because of the patents and who holds them.

[Per Berner]

The patents must surely have run out by now?

[J D Sauser]

The patents must surely have run out by now?

Depending on when they actually got ISSUED, yes, the could have expired (become public domain) long time ago, and unless they were held by one of the Lashley's personally (which wouldn't surprise me a bit), it could be part of the "new" Emmons Co's patrimony.

But as stated, just like Carter's "BCT" and Zum's "Hybrid" approach, pretty much the same era) some form of the Anti-BDDT-"device" showed up back then on a variety of steel brands.
So, I doubt that it really is a question of "a" patent.

... J-D.

[Donny Hinson]

Why isn’t the Emmons counterforce industry standard?

Because, as a few have already stated, it's largely unnecessary. Just another added thing to cause problems when someone tries to "adjust" it to make their guitar tune better.

Tuning is a skill, just like playing (and playing in tune). It's always a compromise, and there is no such thing as being in perfect tune. Spend more time listening (to develop your "ear")and less time relying on a digital tuner and someone else's presets, and it will come. Yes, I know every great pro probably uses a digital tuner, but most any of them can tune and play just fine without one; it's more of a convenience than a necessity.

[memphislim]

I've had 3 guitars with anti tuning hardware on them. The best is my LLIII. Properly adjusted, I would challenge anyone to know the difference between it and an LGII. That's the key- properly adjusted. The LLIII counterforce pushes on the changer axle in tunable amounts just to counter act the cabinet drop caused by body flex. Each of the A, B and C pedals has it own adjustment so you can really fine tune it. It's quite brilliant but it's not reversing or preventing the source of cabinet drop, it's only compensating for it.

I also have a Zum ACS. It has a system that also pushes against the changer axle but the design is all above the deck not mostly below as is the LLIII. It's simpler, and less expensive probably. It does not work as well as the LLIII system. It greatly reduces my guitar's cab drop from 4.5 to about 1.0. If I try to tune it out any further pedal feel goes from almost no detectable increase in tension to unacceptable. It's still a winner in my book as it helps a lot, but it does have more unintended side effects than the LLIII.

Years ago I had an Excel with a counter force type deal on it. I imagine it might have been a Mitsui one-off as I've never seen another. I picked it up in an estate type sale. The keyless tuner assembly was spring mounted. The pedals exerted a tunable amount of force on the springs which then sharpened the strings. I thought it brilliant at the time but never spent enough time with that guitar to really get feel for how well it worked.

I also have a Ross Shafer Sierra and it has no cabinet drop, sounds amazing and one of the most beautiful guitars I've seen.

So properly built, you can eliminate cab drop. Properly engineered and tuned, you can compensate for it. I'd love to see a system that can stop a body that is flexing. I have experimented enough that I'm convinced it's not the axle bending that causes CD.

[Jerry Overstreet]

I suppose the detuning factor cause might vary from guitar to guitar, brand to brand but in my 40+ yrs. of playing 14 or 15 different guitars, the biggest offender is the plain 6th string detuning for various reasons depending on the guitar build.

I have read other players having the 8th or 10th string being the culprit, but for me it's always been 6.

My solution has been, for any guitar having significant audible string 6 detuning is to add a compensator on the A pedal for truing the 6th. This just pulls the open 6 back to true and it only takes a smidge using the crank hole of the least pull and barely affects pedal feel if at all.
....and works regardless of the cause of the detuning.

I activate this comp on the A pedal with a rod and crank on 6. This also trues the A/F combination from being flat.

I've read other players say that this comp causes some instability with other combinations but I've not seen that. That is the simplest method I've found.

It's the same method as comping the 7th and 1st strings when pedals are activated. MOF, I do that too and use the same bell crank and an additional rod.

Those are the only real detuning problems I've encountered on any of my guitars among diff makes and even guitars from the same maker.

But back to Emmons, I only know what I read in the information from them that I posted earlier in this discussion.

[J D Sauser]

Yes, I forgot to mention that some Excel Superb Keyless models had a compensating system on the keyless tuner end. It was not meant to "bend" a 1/2" heat treated shaft, rather to compensate for the detuning created by cabinet drop by tensioning the whole tuning a tad.

I looked at it and disconnected it all.

I must admit that I start to wonder if the Lashley and similar BDDT-counter force device was really meant to "bend" the 1/2" dia changer shaft, as we were by the way told or made to believe back when it came out (and again, I don't see that happening), but to push some counter-force on the CABINET... in other words push the cabinet to "buckle" up a little.

Some seem to want to have us believe you can exert that kind of force on a steel shaft or a cabinet WITHOUT any added force or energy to be felt by the pedal which actuate that device.
Likewise I seem to see a certain proliferation of youTUBE and InstaGRAM videos which try to suggest the possibility of not only perpetuum-mobile-contraptions but even some devices which will generate such excess of "free" energy out of "nothing" that American households will soon be able to go off the grid .
I shall leave it at that.

The Ross-Sierra has very little BDDT because it's soundboard is NOT attached to the frame (which takes all the pedal pull-down stress alone, almos) except on both ends. I think that at that point, the remaining detuning under change-stress, is less from pedal-pull down, than it is from the change in tension from strings being pulled tighter with certain changes.
But most of all, the "free" soundboard allows the guitar to "breathe" and much of the vibrations being recycled to the strings instead of being bled via the legs into the floor.

... J-D.

[James Strelow]

Jerry, I notice the drop most noticeably on my 6th string as well. The other strings have some but it is barely noticeable, especially to a non steel player who doesnt have as much of a musical ear. A big factor I admit is me overanalyzing and wanting to be a perfectionist, especially coming from playing 6 string guitar where you just tune it up to the tuner and stop thinking about it. Pedal steel has sent me down the rabbit whole of ET vs JI as it has many others. The detuning on all the other strings to me is not enough to make anything sound super foul, but the 6th string drop is enough to make it particularly noticeable to me. Just got me thinking about it some more. What I recently discovered that makes balancing the AB/AF changes with the open string was tuning the G# to straight up with the A pedal depressed and then compensating the rest of the changes to match this. I never read a tuning procedure where anyone said to do this, so took me some time and experimentation to arrive here.
My point wasn't necessarily related to specifically bringing back the Emmons counterforce, moreso just that it seemed that people were working on finding possible solutions to the age old cabinet drop factor a while ago, but seems like most have just learned to live with it. Nothing wrong with that, just surprised me a little bit in the pedal steel world of crazy smart and intuitive musicians who are often engineers who seem to always be looking to innovate and tinker.
JDs comments on the separate soundboard are interesting and what I was wondering, basically if anyone has made any design changes recently in the quest to counteract cabinet drop.