Blonde Fender 400

Herb Elliott · Post by **Herb Elliott** » 6 Mar 2021 11:18 am

I would like to take my long scale 400 back to original color. The turquoise doesn't thrill me at all, does anyone know what the exact blond/beige color was?

Mark Perrodin · Post by **Mark Perrodin** » 6 Mar 2021 1:37 pm

i refinished one with the products available through reranch..com. came out nice for a rattle can job. relic’d it a little with a heat gun and spray air and it looks like my other all original 400. good luck, it’s a fun project.
mark

Herb Elliott · Post by **Herb Elliott** » 7 Mar 2021 4:08 am

thanks Mark I appticiate your reply, Vintage Cream it will be. By the way I'm new to psg's and I'm undecided between C6th and E9th tunings what do you use?

K Maul · Post by **K Maul** » 7 Mar 2021 5:35 am

Please post pictures. What style do you want to play, how many pedals do you have? If you use the search function here you can dig up more info on Fender 400s. Thereâ€™s even more on the Facebook page Fender Pedal Steel. As long as you are painting it you should take the changer out and give it a thorough cleaning with naphtha (lighter fluid) and wire brush, Then lube it all with a dry Teflon lube. No oil of any kind.
The big pulley on the tuning key side should also be cleaned that way.
Lining up the cables correctly in that pulley is VITAL in performance and keeping it in tune.

Mark Perrodin · Post by **Mark Perrodin** » 7 Mar 2021 6:35 am

well, as k maul said your tuning will depend on how many changes your guitar has. i have one long scale 400 with 9 pedals set up to sneaky pete’s B6 tuning. i have another 9 pedal long scale 400 that has the sacred steel E7 tuning. i also have a 7 pedal short scale 400 that is tuned to the top 8 strings of the E9 tuning. if i was back at the beginning with a long scale guitar i would set it up for C6. the long scale guitars seem to really do well with a 6th tuning and there is all kinds of instructional material. you might have issues with E9 on a long scale but sometimes you can work around them by tuning down a step. please feel free to pm me if you have questions about setting up your guitar and avail yourself of the information on the facebook fender pedal steel page. you’ll get a lot of good ideas there.

Herb Elliott · Post by **Herb Elliott** » 7 Mar 2021 11:20 am

I will post some pics, this 4 ps came with many problems so it's been a good education getting it playable. A previous owner put in a second pickup by means of a jack hammer I think. I have some Alder wood on order to repair the hole after i remove the unwanted pickup. (pretty crafty with wood) The controler seems to work fine but i'll use the naptha and dry lube like you said. I intend to learn c/w and because I'm an old guy I like the older music more than the new. Could I make my steel sound like it does in appartment #9 right here in my living room? I hope so.
It came with a fith pedal that fell off when I took it out of the case. I'm not sure how I would use it but I will eventually. I've worked on C6 for a few weeks and changed it to E9 this morning, already I can see an advantatge to both. I would love to watch you play 9 pedals.

K Maul · Post by **K Maul** » 8 Mar 2021 1:02 pm

Given what you’ve said I’d tune to the top 8 strings of E9 but tune down to D9. You’ll have better luck with that third string(G#. Or F# if tuned to D) not breaking. Also consider making two knee levers. It’s easy to do with parts you can get at any hardware or Lowe’s type store.
You’ll be on you way to Apartment #9 in short order.

Chris Lucker · Post by **Chris Lucker** » 8 Mar 2021 2:30 pm

Here are the parts you need for a very nice working knee. Those are fake Emmons three piece knee levers. The other stuff is from an aircraft parts supply place.

Herb Elliott · Post by **Herb Elliott** » 8 Mar 2021 3:20 pm

Actually K i have considered makeing knee pedals but as of yet i wouldn't know what to connect them to. I'm at the level of "sleep walk". Learning to pan and pick out a few tunes. Almost 50 years of playing bass hasn't transfered much to the ps, and learning on my own is slow. can you recomend a good tutorial?
by the way as for refinishing, reranch in Texas is Temporarily shut down due to that big freeze so untill i can get everything I need that project is on hold. This should look much better when I'm done.
So I have a #11 on the G# and it pedals up to an A ok but it's pretty quiet, i have ordered verious sizes of crygenic from sgf I'm hoping a #13 will hold up and give a better tone. Like you suggest I've thought of the top 8 E9 and I may do that down the road, i've been at it 3 weeks and plan to try a few tunings till I settle in on what works best.
Glad I joined this forum.

Chris Lucker · Post by **Chris Lucker** » 8 Mar 2021 3:23 pm

Interesting Grover Sta-Tites on there.

Herb Elliott · Post by **Herb Elliott** » 8 Mar 2021 3:24 pm

I meant to add "You guys are great"!

Herb Elliott · Post by **Herb Elliott** » 8 Mar 2021 3:27 pm

Umm Grover sta-tites? You got me Chris

Herb Elliott · Post by **Herb Elliott** » 8 Mar 2021 3:34 pm

oh the tuning keys, you got a good eye Chris

Mark Perrodin · Post by **Mark Perrodin** » 8 Mar 2021 4:38 pm

Herb,
Mr. Lucker is steering you in the right direction regarding adding knees. He is also a very knowledgeable resource on vintage guitars. And finally he seems to have a bloodhound’s knack for finding the rare and unobtainable. A good person to get advice from.

Adding a set of knees would basically give you a steel with 3 + 3 which would give you all the changes you need to play just about anything. I added 2 knees to my B6 guitar but decided i could get all i needed with just pedals so off they came. With the 4 pedals you currently have you could have pedal 1 raise your E’s (D’s) to F, pedal 2 would be your A pedal, pedal 3 would be your B pedal and pedal 4 would lower your E’s (D’s). There’s a ton of music right there. And if you got the 5th pedal going you could lower your second string for a seventh. These guitars are fun to work on. They are akin to fixing up an old truck. You can rig them to do what you want and the challenge is part of the fun. Good luck.

Chris Lucker · Post by **Chris Lucker** » 8 Mar 2021 5:08 pm

If you raise your Es to F and raise the skinny E to F# I would recommend rodding and using bellcranks for the E raise knee lever. That way, you may incorporate a barrel tuner for the F note that will not be hitting a stop in the changer. You may also accomplish the same thing with a cable connected to a pivoting arm with a tunable stop -- like a teeter-totter on its side -- but that is less elegant that rodding the one knee to accomplish the middle note F.

Mark Perrodin · Post by **Mark Perrodin** » 8 Mar 2021 5:13 pm

this discussion is a big reason why i love fender cable guitars. there are many different ways to achieve your goal and it’s a combination of backyard engineering and shade tree mechanics. just a blast.

Aaron Clinton · Post by **Aaron Clinton** » 8 Mar 2021 6:42 pm

That turquoise is awesome.
On a four pedal long-scale I prefer C6 with pedals 8,5,6,7 or Sneaky Pete pedals 2,3,8,7

Herb Elliott · Post by **Herb Elliott** » 9 Mar 2021 6:09 pm

Guitar reranch shows this color to be Daphne Blue, they say Fender used it from '60-'65. My pedal bar is now black but from a tip I got here on SGF I looked closer and found that it used to be Daphne blue also. So I guess this is one of the custom color guitars and not a repainted blond. hmmm That makes a difference

Scott Spanbauer · Post by **Scott Spanbauer** » 11 Mar 2021 6:24 am

The blue is awesome, plus the decal is a keeper. And the hand rest.

Herb Elliott · Post by **Herb Elliott** » 11 Mar 2021 6:39 am

Well Scdott, the blue might stay or it could go blond, A. Clinton liked it too. now the girl, no she has to go, though she is cute, the hand rest, thank you, that's mine.

K Maul · Post by **K Maul** » 11 Mar 2021 7:30 am

I can pretty much guarantee that a .013 will snap on the raise G#~A on a long scale 400.

Herb Elliott · Post by **Herb Elliott** » 11 Mar 2021 7:55 am

haha K you know what? you're absolutly right! I should have just asked. I went back to the #11 for now, do you have another suggestion? D9?

K Maul · Post by **K Maul** » 11 Mar 2021 8:46 am

D9 works for many people. You could probably use a 012 and bump your other gauges up a little. That would necessitate a custom string set which would be extra $$$. You may get a response from Jim Sliff, who has vast Fender experience. He’d recommend taking off the nut and bridge and polishing them to a mirror finish to get rid of any irregularities. He uses E9 on one of his 400s and never breaks strings.

Chris Lucker · Post by **Chris Lucker** » 11 Mar 2021 11:08 am

I string 400s with a 0.010" G# at the top, so use the bottom eight strings of todays ten string E9. Sometimes I change the D string to another high G# so I can double Mooney in the round, like Row Row Row your boat singing in the round when we were kids in elementary school.

Try what Fender suggests in their 400/1000 manual -- if G# on top, string it to the second tuning key, not the first. String the E or second string to the first tuning peg. It was not my idea, it was Fender's so it must have come from the playing public back in the day.

K Maul · Post by **K Maul** » 11 Mar 2021 12:09 pm

If he is using the top eight strings including the chromatic strings the G# would be on the third tuning peg so maybe that will help some with the problem.