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Topic: Lever choice.... |
Tony Boadle
From:
Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland
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Posted 9 May 2018 11:53 pm |
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Before I lock myself in the shed and start my 'fit a single knee lever to my Guyatone 8 string' project, I have questions...
1)Did the original Maverick single lever lower 2 and 8?
2)If so, was it simply because that was a relatively uncomplicated choice of strings?
3)If not, why those strings, as opposed to other options?
4)If you had to fit only one lever to an 8-string, suggestions please on what would be the most useful function?
Last edited by Tony Boadle on 10 May 2018 1:13 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Tony Prior
From:
Charlotte NC
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Posted 10 May 2018 12:36 am
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The original Maverick lowered 2 a half tone. Later models may very well have lowered 2 strings on that one lever.
Who can say why string 2 was the choice. For me it worked out just fine as the 2nd string lower was an excellent starting point for phrasing, scales and of course the 7th chord. It doesn't really matter which string you start with on this lever, at some point you will want or "need" to grow into lowering 2 a half tone and a whole tone and lowering 4 and 8 a half tone each. In a many schools of thought they are each mandatory .
We can argue which one is better and which one should I have right now but at the end of the day they each have merit.
Think of this another way, today, many new players are asking, what do I do with the 2nd string lower ? If life started with that lever then they would have learned the use from the very beginning.
Those that began the journey on the Maverick with only the 2nd string lower became very familiar with alternate chord positions up and down the fret board , minors, 7ths, 9ths etc..from the peds, BEFORE we added the E raise and lower levers which all of a sudden opened up a new world. But the OLD world was still at our fingertips.
Good luck !
_________________
Emmons L-II , Fender Telecasters, B-Benders , Eastman Mandolin ,
Pro Tools 12 on WIN 7 !
jobless- but not homeless- now retired 9 years
CURRENT MUSIC TRACKS AT > https://tprior2241.wixsite.com/website |
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Ian Rae
From:
Redditch, England
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Posted 10 May 2018 1:58 am
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| Tony Prior wrote: |
| But the OLD world was still at our fingertips. |
Think early 60s.
1)Did the original Maverick single lever lower 2 and 8?
Yes, and so did all PSGs back then. If you had a lever at all, that would be it
2)If so, was it simply because that was a relatively uncomplicated choice of strings?
Yes. In its simplest form, the pull-release mechanism is limited to lowering only strings that are not raised by a pedal.
3)If not, why those strings, as opposed to other options?
Those were the most useful choice musically.
4)If you had to fit only one lever to an 8-string, suggestions please on what would be the most useful function?
2 & 8. Winnie Winston writing in the early 70s assumed that everyone had that change, but not necessarily anything else. All-pull guitars were available by then but there must still have been a lot of people playing pull-release. Once the technology allowed 4 to be lowered to D# as well as raised to F#, the function split between lowering 4 & 8 on one lever and 2 & 9 on another.
_________________
Make sleeping dogs tell the truth!
Homebuilt keyless U12 7x5, Excel keyless U12 8x8, Williams keyless U12 7x8, Telonics rack and 15" cabs |
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Tony Boadle
From:
Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland
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Posted 10 May 2018 12:19 pm
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Thanks for the really informative and helpful answers, much appreciated.
And once again, it shows the extent of the SGF coverage..replies from North Carolina USA and North East Worcestershire UK! And I'm an ex-pat from Bristol living in Ireland...it's a small world. |
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Ian Worley
From:
Sacramento, CA
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Posted 11 May 2018 12:00 pm
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To expand a little on Ian R's response to questions 2 and 3, a significant part of the logic for student guitars like the Maverick to be setup this way is that there is only one change on any given string, so tuning/adjustment and overall mechanical complexity is dead-simple. Mavericks had the lower return spring on the lever itself so there was nothing connected to the changer fingers except a single rod on the changeable strings.
The range between the open note and the altered note is all there is. On strings with raises you tune the raised note at the keyhead first, then adjust the open note with the stop screw; on strings with lowers you tune the open note at the keyhead and adjust the lowered note with the screw. Easy peasy.
As soon as you add both a raise and a lower to a given string, or incremental raises (both of which are typical on string 4) this becomes a bit more complicated and fiddly to set up and tune. Still quite doable, but no longer this dead-simple binary tuning arrangement. |
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