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Thread: Dirtdog: Pedal Steel

  1. #1
    Forum Member ch willie's Avatar
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    Dirtdog: Pedal Steel

    I couldn't send you a private message, so I'll just make it public.

    Hey dirtdog, Hope your weekend is going well.

    I'm starting to get gas for a pedal steel. I've found one company that makes a lefty (that doesn't cost $5000 and more).

    I have always shied away from one, thinking it'd be so difficult to play that I couldn't do it.

    How did you get into playing it? I'd love to hear about your experiences.
    If we'd known we were going to be the Beatles, we'd have tried harder.--George Harrison

  2. #2
    Forum Member dirtdog's Avatar
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    Re: Dirtdog: Pedal Steel

    Quote Originally Posted by ch willie View Post
    I couldn't send you a private message, so I'll just make it public.

    Hey dirtdog, Hope your weekend is going well.

    I'm starting to get gas for a pedal steel. I've found one company that makes a lefty (that doesn't cost $5000 and more).

    I have always shied away from one, thinking it'd be so difficult to play that I couldn't do it.

    How did you get into playing it? I'd love to hear about your experiences.
    hey Willie - thanks for asking.

    Back in late summer 2013, I sliced my finger open on a chunk of glass (accident, not on purpose)..about two hrs before a gig! Wrapped the finger up and played the gig, but ended up in surgery a couple of days later. End result - a lot of stitches and loss of use of that finger (for about a year). About 2-3 months in and as my skin healed, I was itching to play....something....anything. Figured I could hold a tone bar and play slide or something. Well, that blossomed into lap steel, dobro, console steel and then pedal steel. Bought one of each! Started researching things on http://steelguitarforum.com, got in touch with some local players, took a look at some for sale around me and had a few long talks with a local(ish) pedal steel luminary - Al Brisco. Was thinking of buying a 6 string pedal steel to get started. He warned me off that, not to waste my money - go right for an S10 (single neck 10 string, three pedals and levers). So I did.

    I traded a Fender Custom Shop Jazz for an 80s BMI S10 pedal steel after I had done my research/talked to Al. There was a guy up in Sudbury, Ontario who saw my ad (looking for pedal steel) and we got to talking. Decided that meeting halfway between Sudbury (near Northern Ontario) and my place was a good idea. So I drove three hours in a horrible snowstorm to meet him in Mattawa, Ontario. What a drive - glad I had a Subaru AWD that day! We both figured our respective instruments were around $2500-$3000 (CAD), so it was an even trade. I think he got the slightly better end of the deal, but I was MOTIVATED!

    Anyways, got the pedal steel home and started messing with it. Needed some strings and accessories, so put in an order with Al. He also talked me into a new pickup for the unit (Lawrence 10 string pickup). Around the same time, I got in touch with Dan Burnham from BMI to figure out the provenance of my steel. He figures it was sold new in Minnesota in the mid 80s. Somehow made its way to Sudbury and then into my hands. Pretty cool! Put on new strings and installed the pickup, learned how to tune it (E9 tuning) and then set out to figure out how to play it (it's got an Emmons setup, after Buddy Emmons - and that determines with pedals and.or levels pull which strings). Fortunately a lot of the learning material is based on the Emmons setup. Bill Moore from this forum sent me a CD to learn from, too! There's a ton of stuff on YouTube, but Troy Brenningmyers stuff is probably the easiest to get started with.

    Also bought a volume pedal from Al - the Dunlop guitar volume pedal didn't have the right action. Also picked up a Peavy Nashville 112 amp locally - super cheap! Now I had my rig! You can get into some serious GAS with pedal steel, but there's not reason to go broke doing so. I figure that I have about $3500 (CAD) into it total - accessories, amp, volume pedal, new pickup etc.

    So - playing the damned thing. Took me a while, but it clicked eventually: your left hand is the fret, your feet and knees make the chords and you have a couple of different "grips" to use with your right hand to make different inversions of those chords. Being able to competently finger pick before sitting down on pedal steel helped. I made up some cheat sheets, but the chord chart/diagram by Patricia Warnock is permanently on my music stand. https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=147199 It was a magical moment for me when I realized I could make all the chords in a harmonic progression - in any key - using mostly the pedals/levers and *barely* moving my left hand (save for the augmented chords). What I'm trying to say is that for someone with a guitar background, the pedal steel is not that much of a stretch to figure out of the mechanics of it all. It's open tuning for cripes sake!

    I started with the ye-olde G-C-D type country tunes and got my reflexes working. I somehow stumbled onto playing Little Wing just with the pedal steel - huh! I was also building my dobro chops at the time and I think that helped - even though the tunings of the two are quite different. Within a few months, I was able to get up on stage with my band and play a few songs on the steel. It's relatively easy to get started but really tough to master. Still working on it 7 years later. I jam with a band now where we play everything from Stones to Beatles to Delbert McClinton to Sam and Dave and some Motown stuff. Some pretty challenging chord progressions in some of those tunes. Somehow I make the pedal steel work (as well as the lap steel). Good times.

    Even though I'm still pretty much a hack, I make it work well enough. Every musician I've ever played in front of has made a point of coming and talking to me about "that sweet slide guitar sound". I really should be putting a LOT more effort into taking my skills to the next level, but I'm just as happy plodding along the way I am. I don't really aspire to be the next local pedal steel superstar!

    What's been great is when I listen to music - I hear the pedal steel in tunes where that never registered before....like Elton John's Tiny Dancer...who knew?

    What I don't know is how lefties adapt to pedal steel - do they make a left handed pedal steel? Or are you forced to play it "right handed"? The hive mind over at steelguitarforum.com would likely have an answer for that.

  3. #3
    Forum Member ch willie's Avatar
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    Re: Dirtdog: Pedal Steel

    I've only found one lefty, clocks in about 1000. I've lost the link to it. A guy who plays steel on another forum I'm on suggested it. I need to go back and find it.

    You see, I know so little. I didn't know that 10 strings was a standard. It makes sense to me.

    I'm from Nashville, and I went in Sho-Bud a few times when I was a kid, but I knew very little about anything and was saving money to buy my first bass. I couldn't have afforded a Sho-Bud. But in those days, you could get one of those for a good price.

    Were those well-known outside of Nashville?

    Anyway, thank you for your articulate story and explanation. I really enjoyed reading all the details. I love stories about how people got into something that matters to them.
    If we'd known we were going to be the Beatles, we'd have tried harder.--George Harrison

  4. #4
    Forum Member dirtdog's Avatar
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    Re: Dirtdog: Pedal Steel

    Quote Originally Posted by ch willie View Post
    I've only found one lefty, clocks in about 1000. I've lost the link to it. A guy who plays steel on another forum I'm on suggested it. I need to go back and find it.

    You see, I know so little. I didn't know that 10 strings was a standard. It makes sense to me.

    I'm from Nashville, and I went in Sho-Bud a few times when I was a kid, but I knew very little about anything and was saving money to buy my first bass. I couldn't have afforded a Sho-Bud. But in those days, you could get one of those for a good price.

    Were those well-known outside of Nashville?

    Anyway, thank you for your articulate story and explanation. I really enjoyed reading all the details. I love stories about how people got into something that matters to them.
    You're welcome and, well, there ya go - a lefty pedal steel!

    Yeah, the range of options and nomenclature is a bit overwhelming - leaving consoles/straight steels out of the scope, you've got 8 string, 10, string and 12 string, single neck or double neck (in either E9 or B6 tuning, or both), 12 string "universal", headless, various co-pedents (Emmons, Day, etc - that describe the mechanics of a pedal steel and which strings they affect). Lots of gadgetry, different weight steels (tone bars), different volume pedals specific for pedal steel (Goodrich, Hilton Telonics), pedal steel specific preamps, specific amplifiers (Peaveys are weapon of choice, but other smaller builders like Milkman make highly regarded pedal steel amp). Lots of power, clean tone and big JBL is a common configuration in a pedal steel amp.

    So many brands - Sho-Bud is like the Fender/Gibson of the pedal steel world. But also Mullen, GFI, MSA, BMI, Excel, Fessenden and so on. We've got a couple of small builders in Canada, even! Fender also made pedal steels, but ironically, they are not highly sought after things in comparison. Their console/straight steels (no pedals), that's another story!

    With the less expensive ("student") level instruments, one thing to look out for is "pedal drop", or how the frame of the guitar flexes when you engage the pedals and how the pitch of the whole instrument changes as a result. Cheaper usually = more flex = pedal drop. Some flex is inevitable, question is - how much does it affect the pitch overall? Most instruments have aluminum skeletons, wood panels and are covered in formica. It's the aluminum frame that's the important part of the equation there.

    From what I understand, Steel Guitars of Nashville (Hendersonville) is THE place to go.

    Funny story - when I was a kid (like under 10 - in the 70s) when I'd see a country band and a pedal steel player, I thought it was a tiny piano and that the player looked to be...um....developmentally disabled. My uncharitable assessment was mostly from the way the player's hands were positioned and what their feet were doing. I know, I know....I've grown out of that!

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