Steel Guitar Builder

Having never seen one I am thinking about a 12 stringer pedal steel , might be a lot of strings but might be a great challenge too , does anyone know much about them? any ideas ? What would be a good setup ? Russ

Contact Will Cowell, who frequents this site, Bluesteeel,i think his user name is. He plays a 12 string universal Williams.

Here's one I've been playing since 2001.Always played a 12 string ext E9.

Hi azureskys, I play a 12 string Carter Universal. I'm going to assume that you don't know much about them, so bear with me if I'm preaching to the converted!

Generally you can use them with either an extended E9 tuning or with a Universal tuning. Mine is tuned Universal and I haven't changed from the factory setup which can be seen here,

https://www.steelguitar.com/sampleS12Tuning.html

The concept of the Universal tuning is that you can use it in either E9 mode or B6 (the equivalent of the C6 neck on a dual neck). To go into B6 mode requires the E-Eb lever to be kept activated either by knee or lever lock. The usual D at string 9 on a 10 string is omitted to allow the lower strings to go down to a low B, I can still get the D through use of a pedal or lever.

Mine has the usual E9 pedal and lever changes and an additional 4 pedals which function identically to 4 pedals on a C6 neck, one C6 pedal is omitted but I believe you can get the same change from another pedal/lever combination. So, I have 7 pedals and 5 knee levers.

I've never tried E9 extended but from what I can gather the way these are put together are very much down to what the player requires and can be quite specific to a players own copedent. So there is a variety of number of pedals/knees and what they actually do. I guess you could keep to a basic E9 structure but extend it down below string 10.

Basically as far as the build goes, it's really just the same as a 10 string but with two extra strings, additional pedals and 5 levers. Some of the pulls can require a bit of force as you can be pulling quite a few strings at a time, so cabinet drop has to be a consideration I guess.

Ian Rae from the UK built one from scratch and posted his build @ Bobs, some interesting stuff going on there,

http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopi ... highlight=

thanks for the reply ill check that out

i recently purchased a sierra universal 12 stringer , got it at a low low price and couldnt pass on it. Im having some work done it as it needed brought back to what it was from the maker ( Sierra ) . Im still going to build one myself or give it a try anyway , i really like the Sierra look all but the mica finish which if fine but im thinking a pretty wood body for mine , I have never built an all pull changer I guess its time i give it a shot .