Recommendations for what strings to have benders

Dan Otranto · From: Vermont, USA

I'm in the process of building a baritone 8 string console. I know very little about lap, console and pedal steel, I know zip about music theory...this is just sort of a project to build a thing I can noodle around on.

The scale length is going to be 28.5, I would like to make some benders for it that can emulate pedal steel in the style of the Duesenberg, Certano, Hipshot units.

Can anyone recommend a tuning that would be good to use in the style of western swing, and which strings should have the benders on them?

scott murray · From: Asheville, NC

those benders usually correspond with the A and B pedals on standard E9 tuning. western swing is generally played with a 6th tuning (C6, A6, E6, etc) but there's no reason you can't have the A+B changes as well.

if you were to tune C6 it could look something like this (high to low):

G (or D)
E
C
A
G (bend to A)
E (bend to F)
C
A
_________________
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Justin Shaw · From: Ontario, Canada

So I assume you're going with palm benders? Or are they pedal benders? I'm wondering because I have a baritone tele with a 29" scale, and the lowest string on that is 0.080" which is massive. I want to put benders on it but haven't gotten around to it yet. I expect a half step bend at most.

That said you probably won't want to bend the largest string, but still, depending on the gauges you choose, the bender is going to have to be pretty substantial I would think.

As for tuning the simplest answer seems to me to be a straight ahead C6, which from high G to low A is

G
E
C
A
G
E
C
A

That gives you just two sets of 4 strings to memorize. The 6 string C6, which is the same as taking off the high G and low A, is one of the most popular 6 string lap steel tunings, and there is a lot of learning material available.

The basic idea is that it grants immediate access to major and minor chords by picking three adjacent strings to play. So if you play ACE that's Am. If you play CEG that's a C chord. The two sets of 4 strings means you can play these chords in two different octaves without moving the bar.

Finally, where to put the benders. I'll leave that mostly up to someone else because I don't yet play the C6 neck on pedal steel, but I will say that the following setup would give you a ton of easy to understand options:

Leave the bottom 4 strings as is, so ACEG lower set would have no bends on them. This is mechanically useful as well, since these are the hardest to bend.

For the top 4 strings you want the following 3 benders:

G (leave it)
E -> F (3)
C -> D (2)
A -> B (1)

You then have all these chords without moving the bar, with benders in brackets:

C
Dm (2,3)
Em (1)
F (1)
G (1,2)
Am
Bdim (1,2,3)

You could also put the bender for E on the lower E. I've left out the theory for the most part, so let me say you'd have to learn the grips to get these chords. That said for 3 benders, 8 strings in two sets of 4, that's all the diatonic chords in a pretty slack package.

Hope this helps! Let me know how this goes I'd love a baritone set up like this haha.

edit: woops I was writing at the same time so a little overlap

Dan Otranto · From: Vermont, USA

Thanks for the advice.

Ill probably go with just 2 palm levers, maybe go with E7 tuning transposed down 5 steps?

Digging around it seems like people have issues using palm levers/multibenders with C6?

I came up with this tuning...no clue how far off the mark I am.

Eb F# G# B Eb F# B G#

The Eb in the middle will bend up 1/2 to E and the F# will bend up a full tone to G#

If I went for a third lever where would be a good spot? Have it drop in tone?

Here is the rough idea of the thing...currently printing the patterns for casting aluminum for the head. Ill have the board and bridge plate laser cut out of alum..birds eye for the wood stuff.

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