For my iconoclastic sound designer’s esoteric purposes, a pedal steel guitar is a platform and not a hideously complex testbed for figuring out how to manipulate a prolific set of changes.

The basic operation is simple: pedals allow the player to change the tuning of a string in the midst of, or right before, or after, or during a movement of the bar from fret to fret.

Here, the great player and friend of the pedal steel Mickey Adams, offers beginner’s lesson that shows in two minutes what I’m describing.

He’s using a modern two 10-string neck pedal steel guitar, and, likely the total number of tuning changes on the E-9th neck, the so-called country and western neck, numbers at least fourteen. My guess is the number is very roughly the number of pedals, three on the floor and four on the knees, times two.

My two Fender 400′s are antiques and the string changes are driven by a dependable, slow-responding, archaic mechanism consisting of four cables attached to four pedals. Leo Fender and his team figured this particular mechanism out sometime in the mid-fifties. Although it remained the mechanism underneath Fender steels until 1974, it was mechanically obsolete by around 1960.

Two changes per cable allow me eight changes in all. Unlike modern pedal steel guitars, I can change the overall tuning in fifteen minutes, rather than in an hour or more. This has made me, for lack of a better term, ‘a tuning slut.’

This month I decided to normalize my tunings. This means deciding once and for all to keep the poor man’s E9 on one guitar, and do a modified B6th on the other. (B6th was the tuning my favorite steel master, Sneaky Pete Klienow utilized, also on a Fender 8-string guitar.)

Eight changes isn’t enough to support full modern tunings, yet, after some consulting with the helpful crew on the Fender Steel Forum, I made some decisions, and now am all over this:

Note-KL means Knee Levers; this lever isn't on the guitar, yet

I look at my tunings as a sixteen-string guitar. In this way the intervals, irrespective of the key, may be analyzed at every fret. For example, the A pedal on the B6th is used to get a Major chord at every fret. A big chunk of any scale is hidden in this ‘sixteen string’ way of looking at a tuning. The B6th is very close to the E9th, with the same suspended chords, as-it-were, right under foot.

Experimental tunings now move over to two of the lap steels.

Flying Burrito Brothers Live at Fillmore East 1970, (released this year.) Chris Hillman, years after the night captured on this energetic new addition to the Flying Burrito Brothers discography:

Sneaky Pete’s steel guitar shines throughout and may be his best performance on record.

What happened to The Flying Burrito Brothers the next year, 1971, ushered in twenty-five years of what I would term, fractal dynamics, as different configurations of players, constituting a kind of shifty strange attractor, bubbled up and out and up again, all around either the original ‘brand,’ The Flying Burrito Brothers, or Burrito Brothers, and, finally, Burrito Deluxe. Pedal steel icon Sneaky Pete left the band late in 1971, only to find a new attractor three years later, as the band rose once again after all but disbanding a few months and a European tour after another shuffle of personal followed in the aftermath of Chris Hillman, Michael Clark, and Bernie Leadon all moving on to greener pastures.

Sneaky Pete remained not quite the central constant in the midst of various permutations, with each at least securing the ‘Burrito’ part of the band’s name. Yet, the result is that there is a lot of Sneaky etched on legitimate and illicit recordings strung between 1974 and Sneaky’s last recordings, released in 2009 with Burrito Deluxe.

Although there was a certain measure of cynicism likely in the motivation for some of these configurations, and, each of the studio recordings are dragged down to different degrees by mediocre material and, at times, too much obedience to the commercial trends (in country music) of their day, there is also a lot of terrific Sneaky Pete steel guitar on display. Other moments of grace are supplied by musical evidence that supports just how much the shape-shifting cast of characters enjoyed playing with each other. Amongst the likes of talented and heart-felt players such as John Beland, Joel Scott Hill, Gib Gilbeau, Kleinow was the only first tier player, yet under the different variations of ‘Burrito’ the various crews kept their ‘Bakersfield sound’ inflected California country rock going against, really, the odds.

Of course Chris Hillman wasn’t onboard for the ensuing messy history, so he didn’t get to hear the ace steelman do his thing on many a long lonely night. Sentimentally, I will always feel Sneaky’s amazing essays on The Guilded Palace of Sin are not only his best work on record, but represent a pedal steel guitar-driven country rock moment second to none. Still, especially in the various Burrito ensembles of the eighties, there exist a plenitude of recorded and stunning Sneaky moments. This was especially the case throughout the eighties. (I will offer up a mix in a later post.)

a clip from the rear cover of Pacific Steel

Here’s 30 minutes worth of the Sneaky Pete, with five tracks taken from two albums, Suite Steel, and Pacific Steel, that featured his playing along with other virtuoso players.

1 Flying Burrito Brothers::Star Of The Show 4:10
2 Sneaky Pete Kleinow::Splittin’ Image 1:58
3 Flying Burrito Brothers::Did You See 2:58
4 Sneaky Pete Kleinow::Medley: My Back Pages, Peaceful Easy Feeling, Wheels 3:55
5 Sneaky Pete Kleinow::It Makes No Difference 5:07
6 Sneaky Pete Kleinow::Blackbird 2:06
7 Sneaky Pete Kleinow::Cannonball Rag 2:25
8 Flying Burrito Brothers::Hot Burrito #2 4:38

h/t Tim Connors offers up a capsule history of all permutations Burrito on his essential web resource about all things The Byrds.

Red Rhodes, with Mike Nesmith; thinking of Jamie the amazing Dynamo Man

Al Perkins with Manassas; for your Mr. Mike

Buddy Cage, New Riders of the Purple Sage reunion; for you Casey drivin’ that train.

Instigation? Speedy West with Lawrence Welk.

click for large version

(The pictures were taken right after dis-assembly. The main aspect of restoring the mechanics was cleaning and lubricating. The picture of the springs–row three–show the condition of a part “before.” The changer’s action was very rough and noisy before, and very smooth and quiet after everything was re-assembled. The restored changer is slightly smoother than that of the never dis-assembled first guitar.)

Having taken apart my second Fender 400 eight string pedal guitar for the purpose of restoring its changer, I thought I’d highlight the innards of the changer and a few other parts. I’ve recounted the story elsewhere on the blog, but I didn’t resist the siren song of a ’400′ when it appeared on craigslist described as “having only been out of its case for months.” It turned out not to be minty or super duper cherry, but was close enough to light use, included a lightly traveled case with the original manual, and had a knee lever. Both my guitars were likely made between 1968-1974. Except for the knee lever, they are identical.

I ended up taking the 2nd guitar apart twice. (On the first go-around I failed to seat one of the tiny springs on the changer’s set screws. ooops.) It’s a straight-forward dis-assembly. You have to keep track of all the parts, and, setting the eight springs for the ‘lowers’ is a pita. But, that’s the sum of the challenge. 1-row-right shows the underneath of the changer with most of the loops removed from exterior fingers. 2-row-left/center shows both parts of the actual changer. The blades pivot to move the chrome inner levers that extend to constitute the bridge and actualize the half or whole step detuning. Both the lower and the upper portions of the changer go in the well in the third pic, row two. 3-row-right shows the cranks that connect the pedals to the cables. The middle picture shows the underside of the changer with the loops attached and the pesky large springs for the lowers. The Fender pedal steel guitar line went through two main iterations, first from long scale to short scale, and then from 8 strings to 10 strings–in both single and double neck models. Ironically, even after the introduction and continual improvement of the modern changers found on competitors’ guitars, Fender continued to produce their obsolete designs for 15 years.

Often described as having mechanicals that are “infernal contraptions,” in fact, Leo Fender’s cabled pedal steels ruled the roost throughout the fifties, until the ‘rodded’ mechanism became both refined and instantly popular around 1960. The cable mechanism is versatile: although each pedal provides but ta pair of single raises or lowers. The set-up can be changed in 5 minutes. On the other hand, this single-raise/lower is also is a constraint compared to the double or triple raise capabilities of modern mechanisms.

However, with a Fender, you also get–on my guitars–the classic jaguar 8-string pick-up, and its so-called re-do of the Bakersfield sound; a reedy treble-bodied timbre. For me, the Fender lends itself to being routed through delays and modulation effects. Although the Fender doesn’t have huge sustain, this can be partially addressed by using a compressor.

Still, great players, including Red Rhodes, Al Perkins, and above all, the iconic cablehead, Sneaky Pete Kleinow, opted at points in their career for the Fender sound, and, heck, advantages. Sneaky Pete spent his entire career tuned into a 1957 Fender 400, albeit a very souped-up one.

The chief advantage I exploit with the fabled contraption is the ability to change tunings. As mentioned previously, this can be accomplished quite quickly because the hook-ups run off pulleys, while the equivalent of a bell crank–the lever-like mechanical piece that transfers the foot pedal motion to the detuning mechanism–is at the end of the connection to the pedal. Actually, the model with the crude add-on knee pedal has a stable tuning: E9 with but one of the standard ‘chromatic’ strings, F#, moved to the top, above the high E, where it remains as out-of-order as it does in the usual, so-called, Nashville E9. However, I have been playing around with tuning the entire copedent down a half step to Eb. This permits the first position open EMajor chord to happen at fret one, where one can slide into it. The other Fender 400 is the experimental platform. I’ve played around with pentatonic tunings, and right now it’s in Dminor with three of the pedals configured to cause this to change into D7. It is not a versatile tuning, (although versatility is not a very appropriate benefit–in my hands.)

Sneaky Pete

Evidently, this was enough for him to work with. I knew what a pedal steel guitar was in a most basic way. Then came Christine’s Tune, the kick off track from Palace. The spiraling waves and descent into fuzz of Mr. Kleinow’s steel on this desert island disc had an immediate, life altering effect.. Well, it was one of the things he was trying to highlight as he sought to quickly bring me up to speed on the genealogy of the family universe of all things Byrds and Buffalo Springfield. He may have pointed out I was tasting steel flavors quite different, fantastically different, than those of Lloyd Green and Jaydee Maness, the players on The Byrd’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo.

Sneaky Pete Kleinow passed away January 6, 2007 at 72. In the realm of popular music he was an irreplaceable musical talent. Incredibly, although there are literally tens of steel players who can be counted to be in the stylistic lineage of the masters, of Emmons, Green, Franklin, Myrick, (etc.,) there are today all of zero known players who have etched their own prominent style in the Sneaky lineage.

The inspiration for remembering the first Sneaky moment is twofold, First, at the end of May this year, a senior member of the Fender Steel Forum, posted an amazing series of pictures of Sneaky’s tricked out Fender 400. (The pictures were from Anita Kleinow, one of Sneaky’s five kids.) Second, I came across a rare track featuring Sneaky, from 1978 and found on a dance pop record by Sharon Redd, Ula Hedwig & Charlotte Crossley. I’ve posted it below along with Sneaky’s ‘Frank Zappa’ moment.

In a career spanning six decades, once he became the first ever rock-and-roll lead pedal steel guitarist, he was guaranteed a ton of session work. He made the most of it. His collection of innovative stylistic approaches were unfurled in over 200 guest sessions. Many of the sessions Sneaky made were a long way from the field of country and country-rock. Sneaky basically owned this far afield niche for 35 years.

Sneaky found his own musical approach and then saturated it in findings gained from his relentless experiments in Fender pedal steel tone. On the musical side, he worked with a B6 tuning on an 8 string guitar, with 9 foot pedals and 2 knee pedals. The stock model of a Fender 400 had 4 pedals and was a single raise and lower guitar, meaning a single pedal could actuate only a pair of raises and/or lowers. This wouldn’t do, so Sneaky modded his Fender to give him lots of choices at every string. Here’s the tuning he used.

He didn’t usually offer up classicisms, hidden in his B6, on the country sessions. Rather, the Sneaky style was much more jazzy. He loved to play curvy single note lines sprinkled with chromatics which deviate from, and resolve a song’s melody, but in short strings of phrases. In this, his style was vocal and somewhat akin to Jerry Garcia’s lead work. Except Sneaky didn’t play a lot of notes, and, his way of circling around the melody is deliciously curvilinear rather than angular. One of the attractive aspects of his note choices was that he wasn’t a busy player so sometimes his solos would seem to slow down mid-tempo songs with their graceful and leisurely unfolding. He swung in his own, distinctive way: sort of pulsing off-and-on a smidgeon behind the beat while building, at times, dramatic solo gems.

On the tone side, Sneaky was one of the great alchemists of psychedelic guitar sound.

The outmoded, archaic–even at the time of Guilded Palace–cable driven Fender 400 must have seemed like the ideal test bed for all sorts of out-of-the-box experiments that quickly left the Bakersfield sound associated with it, in the dust. By 1968, when the first great iconic slab of Sneaky hit the discerning listener’s ears, both his musical and tonal approach was fully formed.

You can see from in the above picture, Sneaky has a row of tone controls on the front apron of his ax. Over the years his command center for tone was a work in progress. (If this interests you, by all means join the Fender Steel Forum and take a close look at the detailed photos posted there.) He was a DIY and technical genius. He built his own effects too.

The Sneaky tone isn’t one tone. This is the most fundamental fact about his sound. It would be a mistake to assume anyone could cobble together chains of guitar pedals or effects, futz with the settings and at once be delivered into the territory of even one of his principal sound choices.

It’s not as if his sounds can’t be described. For example, his tone rings in a very special way. Some very keen sound doctors have taken Sneaky’s sound apart. What they tell of is: a mellow ringing sound, highs scooped a bit, a flavor of chorus detuning, a gentle phasing, and, no reverb but with echo set to some magical conjunction of variables. He liked echoplex and didn’t often use the volume pedal; the latter being the artificial way to sustain dying tone.

What it must have sounded like in person! The sustain we associate with a pedal steel is rolled off in the family of tone most associated with his solo playing. The other remarkable choice he made was to fit his playing right underneath the mid-to-high end of the mix. The B6 is a mid-to-low tuning. In his hands, and even when his runs ascend to higher reaches, because he doesn’t lean on the volume, his lines don’t call attention to this ascent at all. His sense of his sound-in-context was that it be even. He was a terrific background player too, laying his sound as if set in a furrow in the mix.

His sound jumped out of the mix when he shifts into his fuzz tone. I will offer my opinion: his burry fuzz tone was second-to-none. I can’t think of any guitarist who manages his fuzz tone like Sneaky did. Fuzz may be the hardest effect to get, again, ‘even.’ Somehow Sneaky’s fuzz was a very sturdy, predictable, self-consistent, buzz.

He wasn’t a showy player even when his solos leap forward. Yet, between how brilliantly he picked his spots, how he fit his solos and tone in the mix, and how integrated his various unique tones were with his almost elliptical and curvy soloing, the result was that his virtuosity was most clear in this way: “How the heck did he just do that?”

Not for nothing was Sneaky Pete Kleinow the original cablehead. He was also a first call, world class stop-action animator in Hollywood. This isn’t surprising because obviously Sneaky was brilliant and resourceful and disciplined. This second career allows me to grasp somewhat of the appeal of his unique artistry.

For me, the pedal steel of Sneaky Pete is the most animated steel guitar sound of all, and, ever.

Ebb’s posting of close-up photos of Sneaky Pete Kleinow’s Fender 400 via Anita Kleinow | registration required

Pete Kleinow | Wikipedia

Pete Kleinow | Allmusic

Lots of info on Sneaky Pete in various topics on The Pedal Steel Guitar Forum.

extra special tip of the hats to Jim Sliff, owner of the Fender Steel Forum; and coiner of cablehead, and not only the expert on all things Sneaky Pete, but someone whose devotion to Sneaky Pete’s legacy is paying dividends out to fans and players old and new.

I’ve sketched the tale ( 1 | 2 ) of the recent restoration of my grandiosity, and affair with Fender pedal steels elsewhere.

English folkie Bert Jansch collaborated with Mike Nesmith on his 1974 gem,L.A. Turnaround. Nesmith brought along his colleague, pedal steel guitarist Red Rhodes too. By this time, Nesmith was three years into his travels down his own distinctive country-rock byway. Jansch had left Pentangle and returned to a solo career.

I don’t know the back story behind L.A. Turnaround, one of Jansch’s finest–among many fine–records. Much to my surprise, there are on youtube a series of clips of sessions featuring Jansch and Red Rhodes. The setting is a country cottage in Britain. The sessions are marvelous and intimate. Eventually, Nesmith would augment tracks cut in the impromptu studio with contributions from L.A. session men, guitarist Jesse Ed Davis and fiddler Byron Berline, as well as Brits, including bassist Klaus Voorman, and drummer Danny Lane.

The three youtube clips comprise a beguiling mini-documentary.

(L.A. Turnaround was reissued last year. Amazon)

Bert Jansch

Via a tip on the Pedal Steel Guitar forum, here a video of–I believe–Eddie Fulawka making a pedal steel guitar. At one point in the incredibly concise clip from the Discovery Channel’s How It’s Made, the narrator mentions that in getting the pick-up level, “There’s no room for error.”

Hmmm, there’s not a lot of room for error elsewhere. The modern pedal steel guitar is a wonder of craftsmanship, and with the top-of-the-line guitars, each is the product of a lot of handcraftsmanship.

Legendary pedal steel guitarist Pete Drake demonstrates ‘talking steel guitar’ on a magically real clip. Thanks to the superb culture blog, Naturalismo. (The album track for Forever is available there.)

excerpt, interview with Douglas Green, Guitar Player, unknown date

How did your “Talking Guitar” thing come about?

Well, everybody wanted this style of mine, but I sort of got tired of it. I’d say, “Hey, let me try and come up with something new,” and they’d say, “Naw, I want you to do what you did on So-and-so’s record.” Now, I’d been trying to make something for people who couldn’t talk, who’d lost their voice. I had some neighbors who were deaf and dumb, and I thought it would be nice if they could talk. So I saw this old Kay Kayser movie, and Alvino Rey was playing the talking guitar. I thought, “Man, if he can make a guitar talk, surely I can make people talk.” So I worked on it for about five years, and it was so simple that I went all around it, you know, like we usually do.

How did the talking guitar work?

You play the notes on the guitar and it goes through the amplifier. I have a driver system so that you disconnect the speakers and the sound goes through the driver into a plastic tube. You put the tube in the side of your mouth then form the words with your mouth as you play them. You don’t actually say a word: The guitar is your vocal chords, and your mouth is the amplifier. It’s amplified by a microphone.

When did you first use it on records?

With Roger Miller. He had a record called “Lock, Stock And Teardrops,” on RCA Victor, but it didn’t hit. Then I used it on Jim Reeves’ “I’ve Enjoyed As Much Of This As I Can Stand.” I really thought I’d used the gimmick up by the time Shelby Singleton and Jerry Kennedy of Mercury Records wanted to record me. I had already recorded for Starday [a Mercury label] some straight steel things like “For Pete’s Sake,” but I went ahead and cut a song called “Forever” on the talking thing. It came out, and for about two months didn’t do a thing; then, all of a sudden, it cut loose and sold a million. So then I was known as the “Talking Steel Guitar Man,” and did several albums for Smash, which is a subsidiary of Mercury.

This is the ‘well’ the top part of a changer for a Fender 400 pedal steel guitar fits into.

And therein lies a story, a story I will summarize.

I bought a Fender 400 pedal steel guitar in May. However, in July I was scanning various craigslist and happened upon a dude who had a “closet special” Fender 400 a few road hours away. It came with a somewhat hard-to-believe tale: it was a gift in 1970 and the guitar went back into the closet shortly thereafter.

Please mama, don’t put tape on your boy’s guitar.

I drove down, learned I was the only serious buyer (against the usual craigslist scammers,) and bought it. It came with a case, manual, picks and bar. And, much to my surprise, a couple of knee levers—one disassembled, and the other assembled but non-functional. I gave the rig a look-see. Hmmm, closet maybe, but closet subject to barn dust, judging from the fine brown coating on the otherwise pristeen case.

The underside of the guitar was not pretty.

But, lo-and-behold, there was a crosspiece, and a taped-together wooden knee lever, and, a single raise-or-lower rodded changer loop.

I did some quick, ridiculous calculatin’. I already have a well traveled in the past, new-to-me, and aces Fender 400. It is identical to the new candidate I’m staring at. Buy it? So, I figured I end up with a case once I sell my other steel guitar. Good. Deal.

Only when I’m back at the shack do I realize, after a more leisurely inspection, that I’ve also bought the experience and learning moment too. I’m going to have to take the guitar apart and dis-assemble the changer, clean all the parts, reassemble, and, hope to God, I’ve got a second ‘player’ equal to the first.

Two hours were spent taking it apart, two hours were spent cleaning the parts, and, finally, about three hours were spent putting it back together. Incidentally, alkaline carpet spot cleaner–Folex–and water is good solution for soaking parts. Hardest part was figuring out what tools I needed to stretch the return springs, then hold this stretch, and then slip one end over the tab. It was a bear until I figured out how to do it, but otherwise the crude mechanism goes back together easily.

In the small world of Fender 400 pedal steel guitars, discovering a number 5 on masking tape in the panhead cavity is a meaningless surprise. My modestly informed guess is that both my guitars are most likely candidates for the end of the Fender 8 string cabled steel’s run, say 1970-1974. Basically, in every respect, the two 400′s are identical. They could have been made on the same day, or six or seven years apart.

One great advantage of having the changer and pulley and cranks completely in pieces was that this afforded me the opportunity to surgically apply Tri-flow lubricant to the changer, and clean and lubricate the pulley discs and pedal cranks and all the moving parts.

Next I used acetone to clean the chromed parts and Goo Gone to remove the sticky residue from the surgical tape the youthful original owner used to mark the fret positions. The sticky part came off, but if you stick your nose up close, you’d see that the tape’s grit literally was fossilized.

I was very careful not to lose any wood screws. springs, or tuning screws. The only mistake I made was to erase the photos I took of each part—after I had cleaned all the parts.

Then came the moment of truth. Slapped 8 strings from a C6 set on it. Ran it into the Peterson Strobe software, tuned strings and pedals to my ‘Open E sort o’ 9th,’ and got to slidin’. I figured I’d break in the new set and break my heart, or not, over about a week or so.

Verdict? First, I put it back together correctly. The six raises raised and the two lowers lowered. Second, would it stay in tune? Sure. Just like the other one, every now and then it needs the pedal tuning tweaked, but the main tuning holds like a champ.

Cherry!

The biggest delight was A-B-ing the two identical guitars. The Fender jazzmaster pick-up on the closet/barn special is a bit more live; say 15% than the same pickup on the other guitar. The action is very close to the same for each guitar. I use the short pedal throws, and the spiffier guitar is just a little bit quieter with respect to the mechanical sound effects which go along with playing. Cosmetically, the second “barn” guitar is, in my weird world, an A- and the first is a solid B.

Throw in the minty case makes it all a great deal. Yet, only is it so because I took the barn special apart and cleaned up and rebuilt the mechanism. And, it shines.

But, I don’t need two!

Two identical Fender 400 pedal steel guitars - probably 35-40 years old