Axles, bell cranks...

[Allan]

Hope that helps.

Thank you Georg, yes, it is as I thought.

Allan.....

[Allan]

First thread to go to a second page! Gotta be worth something - perhaps a slap on the belly with a wet fish?

[Bent]

Tuning of the end-note and "a rough balance" of Timing. This works well because we usually don't "glide" pedals so slowly that Timing-errors can be clearly heard.

The timing part can be felt, as I was made aware of by Bruce Snow during set-up of Red. I hadn't really given this part much thought; I only saw the value in it after Bruce showed me. He is used to perfect pedal/lever timing on his Fulawka which, of course, is timed like no other guitar. Bad timing gives you the feeling of having a half-stop where you don't need it. I'm sure many people aren't aware of this until they sit down behind one with perfectly timed pedals like the Fulawka.

[Georg]

Bent, that's a good point - bad Timing can really throw you off once you're used to near perfect Timing. It took me quite a while to balance the Timing right after I rearranged my S10 E9 to a form of Universal with 2 sets of 3 octave-tuned strings raised and lowered simultaneously.

Couldn't really get the rod close enough to the axle on the bellcranks for the lowest strings to balance their Timing with that of the the highest, so I had to twist the low-string bellcranks on the axle and compromise slightly - only possible because my steel has round bellcrank axles. This resulted in an extremely short travel for the low-string rods, which meant I had to adjust really carefully to assure enough free-play with released pedals.

Ideally more of this Timing should be done on the changer itself, but on all changers I have seen we can at best only choose between a few raise and lower holes for balancing. That's not always enough to even out the stretch/pitch differences between the highest-pitched plain and lowest-pitched wounded strings to get the timing perfect. Adjustable changer-scissors to balance out the strings, would work wonders for Timing...

[Bent]

Georg, another way to get around the timing problem is to use custom made bell cranks for certain puls, liek Ed does on his Fulawka steels. His bell cranks might look the same , but the holes are spaced say 1/16" inch further apart or closer together, whatever the requirement may be. In other words, only "that" crank is the right one for "that" pull. I suppose the same thing can be achieved somewhat with the Emmons 14 hole cranks. There the hole spacing is lots closer.
Now of course this particular problem is non-existent on the Blanton System where you would have a height difference of a half a thread or less