Steel Guitar Builder

Ed I really like the design of your keyless tuner with one concern. After changing the strings a few dozen times or so do you foresee the need to dress the or even replace the finger itself from whatever damage done to it by the actual motion of the string being "dragged", for lack of a better term,...

It occurs to me that IF the question is what is the best lube then a wear testing procedure would be in order. If, on the other hand, the question is how do you prevent galling then I personally think the best result would come from using a material for the changer finger other than aluminum. Even i...

I will through out a theory here regarding the wear on Bent's axle: Steel and aluminum have different electrical potentials and the aluminum in this case is somewhat "sacrificial". Their close proximity causes the aluminum to oxidize even in the presence of a lubricant. Aluminum oxide is highly abra...

I have a Sierra Session keyless guitar and the tuning screws do move along the tuner shaft as you tune the string. They milled a "valley" in the tuner and it gets packed with grease. I recently tore the guitar down and cleaned it and I can say there was little wear on the tuners after over 15 years....

Mac - the one concern I have after digesting your design for a few days is the amount of movement in the tuning screw on the lower end as it goes through the motions from changing a string to the "neutral" position with the string tuned to pitch and then to the full lower position. The end of the sc...

Bent I see now you are talking about indexing the string height like gauged rollers. I did not make the connection before. I cant blame it on 74 but I can still blame it on the 60s!

Mac - I really like your idea. Very simple integration of the keyless tuner. I just might "borrow" your idea if you don't mind! This is an elegantly simple design and I give it a "10" for conceptual excellence! By the way I really dont think you need to groove the lower finger. Just my opinion. Ed P...

Yes it is. The pull could located anywhere along the length of the slot. And you are right about bending the pull rods with the Blanton bell crank and of course he used them for tuning the pulls as well which is a concept I have never really warmed to although I am sure it works well enough. I was t...

New Bellcrank.pdf Here is a bell crank design I did that is obviously based on the Blanton design. I was trying to find a way to allow for crossing pull rods and still keep the adjust-ability. I found this to be a real challenge and I'm still not 100% convinced but I am reasonably happy with the de...

I while back I posted an idea for removing the slack from a Push Pull design on the steel guitar forum. I think you could probably do something similar with a pull release..... see what you think http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=116481&highlight= scroll down towards the bottom of the p...