| Another knee lever or another pedal? |
| Another knee lever |
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89% |
[ 26 ] |
| Another pedal |
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10% |
[ 3 ] |
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| Total Votes : 29 |
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| Author |
Topic: Knee lever steel guitar |
Alfred Ewell
From:
Virginia, USA
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Posted 26 Sep 2010 4:32 pm |
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| I hear from some circles that more levers will buy you more than more pedals. I'm in no position to judge the truth in that, but it's called the pedal steel. Can a knee do more than a pedal? Seven or eight pedals seem like a lot, but so do six knees - to me at least. I guess levers are an innovation since the PSG was invented - maybe changing the thought of what you want to do next is (more?) easily converted to motion on a knee lever than to a pedal? Would you rather add one more pedal or one more knee lever? And why? |
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Clete Ritta
From:
San Antonio, Texas
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Posted 26 Sep 2010 5:31 pm
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As a beginning steeler (I still am), I started out on a fixed 3X4 to learn E9 basics on. When I got a Mullen 3X4 that was upgradable, I added a LKV to lower B to Bb on 5 and 10, making it a 3X5. This is a common upgrade and Mike Mantey at Mullen helped me out with mine. Thats my vote for Knee Lever.
It may be generally easier to add a lever than a pedal to a guitar, I don't know. For more pedals fever, I got a U12 (more pedals and more strings). Same 5 knee levers though. A D10 with 8X7 is really more than I'll ever need, and I'm now paring my U12 down from an 8X5 to a 5X5 Ext E9 for a while. It all depends on what you have and what is useful to you. A 3X1 you might add a knee. If a 2X2 its a tough call, might want to add a Pedal C. If you have 12 pedals and a Crawford cluster under there, its your call.
Clete |
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Ben Lawson
From:
Brooksville Florida
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Posted 27 Sep 2010 2:15 am
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My first steel had 8 & 4. I kept it for seven years and replaced it with a semi-Crawford cluster 9 & 7. Jimmy Crawford built it in his basement in '77. He wanted me to get 10 & 10 but I chose not to. Jimmy said that when I got used to it I wouldn't be comfortable with less. I have to admit he was right.
On the other hand Shot Jackson once told a prominent steeler that he wasn't fully using the set-up he had and should before he added more changes. |
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Duane Reese
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Posted 27 Sep 2010 6:37 am
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The primary movements on steel are assigned to the pedals, as you know. It's obvious why this is...just imagine if you had your A and B pedal functions on levers...  Yeah. Next, you have some common secondary assignments that are used both independently and in conjunction with the pedals, much more typically than with each other...these are good to be on levers, believe it or not, *for the sake of the pedals* because they let you keep your foot in position. That's essential for operating a lot of changes and for being able to morph smoothly from one chord to the next.
For example, let's say you had your F lever in the 0 pedal position; you could step on A and 0 and get the same thing as if you had hit A and F, but you couldn't make a smooth transition to that from A and B because you can't slide your foot over without lifting it...and you could kiss the augmented chord on A, B and F goodbye. Since you can't hit everything at once, they try to configure it so that changes that would be redundant or useless (like A and C pedals, or E and F lever  and others) coincide with movements you can't really make (like A and C, or both left and right on the same knee)
Again, it's all kind of centered around the A and B pedals, and other stuff is more peripheral, so it usually makes more sense to add levers instead of pedals so that you avoid taking A and B out of action so much...most lever assignments are almost like branches of functionality off the A-B tree trunk...and a tree grows new branches easier than a new trunk.
You'd definitely want more levers instead of pedals on C6 because there is commonly unused space on the left knee on that neck anyway, and since C6 was mostly developed before levers were as mainstream (I believe), you don't want to make the two-foot situation even worse.
By the way: some people refer to the levers as "knee pedals". |
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b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
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Posted 27 Sep 2010 6:52 am
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I have a hard time working more than 5+5 without making mistakes. Horrible, loud mistakes. 5 knee levers are distinctly different motions so no problem there, but it's too easy to hit the wrong pedal in a long row of them.
Beyond 5+5, I say "no more".
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