About Wiz Feinberg's history in the music business, his musical equipment and gig schedule

Wiz's SD-10 Steel Guitar Copedent

What is a Copedent?

The word "Copedent" is pedal steel guitar terminology meaning "chord /pedal /arrangement"

Pedal steel guitars are operated by a combination of floor pedals, mounted onto a crossbar between the front legs, with adjustable height rods connecting them to crossbars on the undercarriage, and knee levers that hang down from the undercarriage of the instrument. The floor pedals are pushed down until they are stopped by adjustable pedal stop screws. The knee levers are pushed either to the left, the right, or up, until they hit their stop screws. The pitch of the changes is fine-tuned on the right end of the casing.

In the case of the more popular "all-pull" mechanisms, the open pitch is adjusted with the tuning keys on the left top ends. The pedal and knee lever raises and lowers are tuned on the right end, by turning threaded hex shaped (3/16") nylon tuners, on threaded rods. the tuners contact the "split-finger" mechanism that raises or lowers the "fingers" in the bridge.

However, there is another class of pedal steel guitars that is tuned differently than the all-pull system. Known as the "Push-Pull" - developed and optimized by the Emmons Guitar Company, the bridge fingers are either pulled to the left, to raise the pitch, or pushed to the right, to lower the pitch. The raises are tuned first with the tuning keys on the top-left end, with the appropriate raising pedals or knee levers engaged. Then, the pedals and knee levers that lower (push) strings are engaged and the lowering stop screws are adjusted in the top row of Allen screws along the right end-plates. Finally, the open pitch is set with the bottom row of Allen screws on each right end-plate.

Wiz's Copedent

The following chart show the open pitches and pedal and knee lever raises and lowers on my 10 string Emmons Lashley LeGrande III pedal steel guitar, which has 4 pedals and 6 knee levers (another knee lever may be added soon as indicated in gray column). While the first three floor pedals are fairly standard, the 4th and 5th are not. Further, I use both standard and non-standard knee lever changes that I have developed over years of experimentation and thousands of gigs.

The chart below represents the E9 tuning neck, affectionately known as "the money neck." It is the most frequently used tuning in recorded steel guitar parts on most of the sessions that have hit the radio waves since the early 1960s. The guitar has a leather pad where the back (C6) neck would normally be, saving about 15 pounds of weight when I have to play one or two set gigs that are strictly traditional and New Country.

Terms used and definitions:

The table below lists the strings, vertically, with #1 = F# (the front string) and #10 = B (the back string), on the E9 neck (front neck). The floor-pedals are listed from left to right, with P-1 as the outside, left pedal. The knee levers are also left to right, where LKL = "Left Knee Left", LKR = "Left Knee Right", RKL = "Right Knee Left" and RKR = "Right Knee Right". "Back" means the knee lever to the back of the body; "front" means to the front of the body and "up" means push the lever up. The term + means raise (sharp) one fret; ++ means raise two frets; - means lower (flat) one fret; and - - means lower two frets.

Volume pedals for pedal steel guitars.

High profile passive Goodrich volume pedal. This pedal has a higher profile that's best suited to people with short legs, like me.

Low profile active and passive Goodrich volume pedal. This pedal has a lower profile that's better suited to taller players.

You can use my Comments Form to contact me about my copedent.

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This page was last updated on: Thursday, 04-Apr-2024 10:31:41 CDT

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