Sho-Bud Changers

Bob Metzger · From: Waltham (Boston), MA, USA

How many different changers did Sho-Bud make?

Duane Becker · From: Elk,Wa 99009 USA

I may miss one on this, cause I'm doing it off the top of my head and not refering to my notes. Anyway

1. The first one was the ones used on the Permentants.
2. The fingertip style changer
3. Single raise-singer lower using the allen head adjustments. Professional and early Pro Series.
4. The nylon rod type changers. The Pro III, and Super Pro
Some of these could overlap into other models. When Sho-Bud built the pedal steels for Fender they used a changer pretty much the same as the Super Pro. There is most likey a better way to describle this, but its broken down into simple terms here. I may have missed one since I did this in a hurry. Duane Becker

Al Marcus · From: Cedar Springs,MI USA (deceased)

That #3 Single raise .,single lower is misleading to a lot of steelers.

It actually is infinite amount of raises and lowers possible on those old Sho-Bud Professionals.

It had one row for raises and one row for lowers, so it looks like single raise/lower, however it had the Barrel tuners on the pull rods that you turned with the rod. For several years in those days, it was the best changer around...al

Duane Becker · From: Elk,Wa 99009 USA

Al, your right and I should have mentioned that in the post. I have a Professional and and an early Pro-II with the single row of allens for raise and single row for lower with the tuning barrels on the rods and it works really great for multiple lowers and raises. The only draw back of course is that you have to tune those extra raises and lowers in the undercarriage. And this, by the way, was one of the reasons I am told that Sho-Bud went to the different changer design with the nylon tuners with all the raises and lowers tuned at the right end plate. Duane Becker

Marco Schouten · From: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

My Sho-Bud has a double raise single lower, when did they start with the triple raise double lower changer?

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Steelin' Greetings
Marco Schouten
Sho-Bud Pro III Custom

Darvin Willhoite · From: Roxton, Tx. USA

My PRO III has the triple raise, double lower changer, large cabinet, and the narrow pedals. I think it was made in the early to mid '80's.

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Darvin Willhoite
Riva Ridge Recording

Jay Ganz · From: Out Behind The Barn

Besides the changers being mechanically
& structurally different, they also were
not made of the same type of material.
I think the Pro-series & later used
pot metal.

My old Professional

[This message was edited by Jay Ganz on 14 November 2002 at 03:37 PM.]

Glenn Austin · From: Montreal, Canada

Duane. All the raises and lowers on a Sho Bud Professional are adjustable on the end plate. You don't have to do anything under the guitar, not even for the half tone raise on the E's

Joerg Hennig · From: Bavaria, Germany

Excuse my ignorance, I haven´t actually owned a Professional yet but am very interested in them. If there is just one screw on the endplate for each raise, then how do you tune an additional raise, like E to F, if not on the undercarriage?

C Dixon · From: Duluth, GA USA

I know nothing about most Sho-Bud changers. I played a Sho-Bud once that a friend of mine bought. It fought me to death, so I went back home and re-fell in love with my ole Emmons' P/P

So since I know nothing about a Sho-Bud, I would like to say that the above posts are intriguing to say the least. And in some cases confusing to me. One in particular is the question about how you can get a half tone change where there is already a whole tone change when there is only one adjustment.

Now, I did work on the Old Baldwin "switchover" several times, which was a single rod (per string) but a multi faceted changer idea. In that, each pedal or knee lever could tune each string to different pitches if desired.

Sho-Bud accomplished this by having the ACTUAL adjustment at the bellcrank, rather than at the changer end. The rod merely changed the adjustment of an activated pedal or knee lever. I might say at best, it was a crude and not so stable system. Very poorly designed IMO. Although the concept was quite good and still, is I think.

The other point I raise concerns and oft' called multi changer system. IE, the Emmons' P/P IS a single raise, single lower system. Where one CAN do some underneath "homespun" rube goldberging, to get around the "single" limitation. But in reality, it is still just a single raise/single lower system. And at best is cumbersome and IMO, not the way it should be.

So my question; did Sho-Bud ever build a P/P system? And if yes, was it a single raise/single lower system like the Emmmons' P/P?

carl

Glenn Austin · From: Montreal, Canada

It has to do with the adjustable brass barrels on the pull rods. Say for instance on the fourth string Most people have a full tone raise on pedal 3, half tone raise on a knee, and a half tone lower on a knee. The raise rod would have 2 brass collars and the lower would have one. Each pedal and knee is attached to a double rack with the raise and lower rods passing thru it. When you move a pedal or a knee the rack moves from left to right, and engages the brass barrel, and pulls the changer finger. The barrel is tunable, meaning it can be made longer or shorter. The Achilles heel in all this is that the brass barrel has a spring on it. and there is a little piece of that spring that passes thru the adjustable end . And it's that little chunk of wire that lets you tune it from the endplate. If for some reason it's pushed in or not there, then you could turn that hex screw on the endplate for 3 days and nothing would change. But it's a very flexible system. If you had enough of those brass thingies, you could have the E-F raise on every pedal and knee at the same time, and all individually tunable. I had 2 guitars like this and I'm sorry now that I sold them. They were great sounding guitars.

Bob Metzger · From: Waltham (Boston), MA, USA

So, were the Sho Bud changers of '73 thru '78 (nylon tuners, brass discs on the rod pullers, welded parts) the same as the changers of the post '78 period (nylon tuners, modular Super Pro parts, clips on rod pullers)? Did these changers each have the same capabilities? What is the maximum raise/lower capability of this changer? I've seen some of these '73 thru '78 guitars that are less than triple raise/double lower.

Bob M.

[This message was edited by Bob Metzger on 07 June 2002 at 12:37 AM.]

Brian Herder · From: Philadelphia, Pa. USA

I have a Pro ll from this era...nylon tuners, brass discs, etc. My guitar has mostly single raise, single lower, with (I think) 2 double raise, single lower fingers on the front neck, and 2 more on the back. These may have been added when knee levers were added, as I assume, Proll's of this vintage were 8x2, and mine is 8x4. I am guessing that it was made right after the Professional, and maybe had the new underside, with the Professional changer....maybe

Joerg Hennig · From: Bavaria, Germany

There was also a double-raise/double-lower. My Pro II has them, and it also has discs on the rod pullers that are not brass in color, but probably steel or maybe aluminium, I´m not quite sure, but at least nothing under there, including the changers, looks like "pot metal". Thanks to the info in Duane Becker´s article on Greg Simmons ShoBud website, I´m quite sure that it must have been built between late ´75 and early ´77. I understand that when the Super Pro was introduced in ´77, they started to put those triple-raise/double-lower changers on the Pro II and III as well, and probably also the "pot metal" parts. Those guitars with narrow pedals and straight knee levers look much less desirable to me...

Brian Herder · From: Philadelphia, Pa. USA

Oops. After reading Joe's post, I realized that the disc things on my guitar aren't brass either.

Al Marcus · From: Cedar Springs,MI USA (deceased)

Duane-I was just going to mention that you can tune the proffessional all from the endplate. When Glenn Austin Did, ok.

Carl Dixon- The changer was like you mentioned on the Cross-over.

Joe Henry, Glenn Austin did a good job explaining the Professional changer. As he mentioned, you could put a Barrell tuner on the E to F#, then on the SAME rod you could put a barrel tuner to pull E to F on a knee lever or another pedal, when you activate the pedal it works on the one you want. But the Rod pushes the other one back so it doesnt activate.

This system can use less pull rods where you have two raises or lowers on the same string.
And having just one hole
instead of 2 or 3 holes on that string, So the changer holes are adjusted for the best leverage and it will work on all of them.

Now on a newer guitar, if I want to use all 3 raises on the newer guitar. I can get good leverage on only one, after that the other two are less.

Another thing about the Professional, it eliminated the individual bell cranks and had a crossrod with ten holes for raise and ten hole for lower, so you just put the pull rod in any hole you want and attache the Barrel tuner , and you were in business.

I had a D10 red birdseye maple, beautiful guitar, played it for about 4 years, hardly ever had to tune it, and had that sound.. I had to reluctantly sell it because it just got too heavy for me to handle. I really liked that guitar and so did the bands I played with......al

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