Please post pics of your reversers etc for pull-release

[Keith Cary]

I have a nice old 50s ShoBud or FauxBud double 9 that I've brought back to life from a pile of parts. I'd like to see how other people have tackled reversers, and how to get both a raise and lower from one finger. I'm thinking particularly of my E strings, on my E9 neck. I have a E-Eb knee lever, with my own pretty crude reverser, but I'd like to also have a "C" pedal with the E to F# change. I can live without it, of course, but if you guys know how to do it I'd sure like some hints.
Here's what I have so far: http://s356.photobucket.com/user/keithc ... g.html?o=3

[Barr Hibbs]

Hi, Keith-- my first steel was an early-70s Sho-Bud that came from the factory with a single knee lever and three pedals. After playing it a year or so I decided to add three more knee levers:
--LKL: raised both E's to F
--LKR: lowered both Es to D#
--RKL: raised both F#'s to G

I completely avoided the need to construct a reverser by using the natural motion of pushing right with my left knee to lower the two E strings.

At the time I had only hand tools (living in an apartment in Brooklyn!) and was (still am) a firm believer in doing things the simplest way possible. Another factor in my decision to fabricate the mechanism myself was that the knee lever kits from Sho-Bud were too expensive for my limited budget.

Unfortunately I've no photos nor drawings of that guitar to guide you, but do look for the simplest means to create the changes you desire. My memory is that I used a return spring for the lowers to pull the flattened E's back to E from D# and tuned the D#'s with separate Allen head cap screws -- no surprises there.

--Barr

[Keith Cary]

Thanks, Barr, I think you're exactly right on being simple. I recently realized (doh!) that the rod arm on that knee has enough room to hang down instead of pointing up, doing away with the reverser. I just haven't had time to change things around yet. And there's a great animated diagram in this forum on how to raise and lower on a simple pull-relaease system. Thanks for responding!

[Barr Hibbs]

You're very welcome, Keith.

After I posted my reply to your original request, I pulled out the parts bin with left-overs from the first modifications. I found several brass collets (with a small hex set screw), a number of fairly stiff tension springs with swaged anchor tabs at each end, a few hex head cap screws that didn't make it back to the proper parts box, along with a few extra cross-rod fingers I'd fabricated.

That small treasure trove of memorabilia suggests that I'd not found an elegant way to establish the neutral position for my two E's, but it worked well enough for my skill level as a picker at that time.

Best regards,
Barr

[Keith Cary]

Barr, check out the next topic down in the index, "Pull-Release". There are a couple of wonderful animated diagrams. Pretty elegant.