Copedents for only 4 Pedals?

Tom Olson · From: Spokane, WA

For anyone who has a Fender 400, what copedent do you use for playing bakersfield/country rock type of music?

I'm assuming that the first 3 pedals would have the current standard E9th "Nashville" setup, but what do you do with the fourth pedal?

By the way, I'm not interested in adding any knee levers or extra pedals. So, I'm only interested in what you do on guitars having only the 4 pedals. Thanks for your input.

J Fletcher · From: London,Ont,Canada

I'm not a Fender 400 player, but am a Mooney fan. I'd lower my G# to G on the 4th pedal if I wanted to do those Mooney licks. But, if it really came down to it, I'd lower my E's a half tone. That change would be hard for me to do without...Jerry

Jerry Hayes · From: Virginia Beach, Va.

Tom, I'd tune it G# E B G# F# E D B (High to Low) and since you only have four pedals and no knee levers I'd have the following:

Pedal one.....Raise strings 2 and 6 E's to F
Pedal two.....Raise strings 3 and 8 B's to C#
Pedal three...Raise strings 1 and 4 G#'s to A
Pedal four....Lower strings 2 and 6 E's to D#

This way you could use pedals 2 and 3 as your regular "country pedals" and use 1 and 2 to give you the same as your normal A pedal and F knee lever.

You could use your 4th pedal for the same as the E knee lever for a B6th and by adding the 3rd pedal it'd make it a B7th.

For some of the "Mooney" stuff you could use both feet like Ralph does and work out of the E's lowered position on pedal four with the right foot (example, key of G at 8th fret) and engage pedal two which would give you the equivilent of the "C" pedal in open tuning.

You can get a bunch of music with this set up. I had it on an old Fender 400 at one time.....JH in Va.
_________________
Don't matter who's in Austin (or anywhere else) Ralph Mooney is still the king!!!

Jim Sliff · From: Lawndale California, USA

I've set up a couple of versions of Sneaky Pete's B6 that works really well on a 4-pedal 400 - the most "normal" one uses his 1,2,7 and 8 pedals. The full copedent is on the forum's copedent page.

The first two pedals work like the A&B pedals in E9; 7 with them gets a vim and is great as a "lick" pedal; 8 is a good iim pedal and also duplicates the 7 pedal in the lower register. It's very versatile (really a sort of early universal) and uses pretty heavy strings, starting with an .015 - not only is string breakage just not even a consideration, you get a real big, fat tone out of the guitar as well. To me it's a much more full and stronger-sounding tuning than either way of doing E9 with an 8-string. If you want more details (and all the string gages) email me and I'll pass them on.

You can get about 3/4 of Sneaky's country-rock playing with these changes alone. He had 9 pedals and 2 knees - the knees were not added until the 70's and the "middle" pedals don't show up all that much in his playing (and #9 he never used at all). I have one neck of my 1000 set up with his 1-8 pedals and both knees, and find myself 90% of the time on those 4 pedals, playing both Burritos stuff and other country rock (including copying E9-ish stuff from things like Sweetheart of the Rodeo).

For a more "rock" setup you could use his pedal #3 instead of #8 - 1, 2, 3 & 7. That works nicely for more blues-rock oriented stuff.
_________________
No chops, but great tone
1930's/40's Rickenbacher/Rickenbacker 6&8 string lap steels
1921 Weissenborn Style 2; Hilo&Schireson hollownecks
Appalachian, Regal & Dobro squarenecks
1959 Fender 400 9+2 B6;1960's Fender 800 3+3+2; 1948 Fender Dual-8 Professional

b0b · From: Cloverdale, CA, USA

Donny Hinson · From: Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.

Rand Anderson · From: Cardiff, California, USA

Tim Whitlock · From: Colorado, USA

Here's my D9th. No chromatics but I'm thinking about adding one.

ebb · From: nj

i think b0b nailed it but tuned to d of course

Tom Olson · From: Spokane, WA

Thanks to everyone for their input -- I appreciate it very much.

I was curious about this -- I don't know for sure, but I believe that Ralph Mooney did most of his early work on an 8-string tuning that did not have knee levers. Does anyone know what copedent Ralph used on his 8-string w/o knee levers?

Thanks again.

William Clark · Posted 12 Oct 2007 9:24 pm

Jim Sliff, I finally set my 400 up using the copedents that you mentioned on this post. It is a really cool setup. I also have a 1000 that I am thinking about setting up with the full Sneaky Pete setup, minus the knee levers. I have not been able to find the Sneaky Pete copedents on the forum so I thought I would ask you if you have a copy or know the URL where I can find it. My e-mail address is 53telecaster@sbcglobal.net.

Jim Sliff · From: Lawndale California, USA

William - the copedents page is slightly hard to find - it's under "links" at the top of the forum. Here's a shortcut:

http://b0b.com/tunings/index.html

String gages for a long-scale are (high to low):
.015
.018
.020
.022
.030w
.034w
.038w
.048w

Anything in the ballpark will work with some adjustment, of course.

If you're not adding the knees you don't need barrel tuners for the double-raise/double-lower trick, and can set the whole thing up in minutes if you have all the pedals. If you're using your 1000 and it's an 8-pedal, just set up pedals 1-8 on one neck - take your pick. I use the back neck. Sneaky never used the 9th pedal, so it's not necessary at all - it was a one-time experiment and became a placeholder for his foot.

On mine I use the extra cable loops for the 4th and 7th pedals (which only have one change each) on my front neck, which has a Sacred-Steel "E" tuning on it, to split the middle "E"'s in each direction. If you want that copedent just for fun, let me know via email. Ed Bierly came up with it for me as an open tuning, and it's great for SS stuff, bottleneck-style blues, and huge cannon-fire power chords.

If you DO have a 9th pedal, I would really suggest using it like Sneaky's left knee lever to lower the first string. That's the knee lever he used most often; the right one he told me (this was pretty funny) sounded too "pedal steel" like.... Razz

_________________
No chops, but great tone
1930's/40's Rickenbacher/Rickenbacker 6&8 string lap steels
1921 Weissenborn Style 2; Hilo&Schireson hollownecks
Appalachian, Regal & Dobro squarenecks
1959 Fender 400 9+2 B6;1960's Fender 800 3+3+2; 1948 Fender Dual-8 Professional

William Clark · Posted 13 Oct 2007 2:24 pm

Thank you very much, Jim! I bought my 1000 about 6 months ago and have not done much with it. This should be a great starting point! I think what I am going to do is use the 8 pedals like you mention and set the other neck up with either C6 or A6 and just use it as a non pedal steel neck. That is what I have been spending my time on for the last 1 1/2 years. Incidentally, what brand of strings do you use? I have been using standard PSG sets in E9 and A6 and just dropping the two high strings. I was actually thinking of trying non pedal sets.

Bill

b0b · From: Cloverdale, CA, USA

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