Hello one and all,
after lurking in the shadows for a while, and nursing a major inferiority complex on account of having only six strings and no pedals available I finally mustered the courage to crawl out of the woodwork.
So here I am, Duesenberg Pomona on my lap, hoping to find a few fellow Multibender users around here and to maybe get an exchange of ideas going.
Hi Dieter, I have a Pomona arriving early next week. Am looking forward to trading ideas with other owners. Thanks for chiming in on my string question thread. This will be my first foray into lap steel. Currently I am a dobro player, and very accustomed to open G tuning. Open D will be a fairly easy transition for me, I've had one of my dobros tuned that way for a while (actually open E). I'll probably stick with the default tuning and lever configuration for a while until I get my bearings. Looks like a great axe for playing blues and faux country.
Right, so here I am again with a caveat. I installed a third lever on the 5th string (A), works nice and dandy until the string breaks (which it will eventually). The multibender doesn't seem to accommodate the thicker string gauge very well. The ball end of the broken string was lodged so firmly that I had to dismantle the whole thing, remove the axle so that I could work on the ball end. Even so it wasn't exactly easy to get the remainder of the string out.
I asked Duesenberg support about their opinion but have yet to receive a reply. If and when I get one I'll post it here.
though I don't own a Pomona, Ive installed the Multibender System om my Gretsch Syncromatic and am very satisfied with it. I find it easiest to use with the Open D Tuning or kind of D6 Tuning (D-B-D-F-#-A-D, low to high) and really think, two levers are enough.
Dieter Stoll wrote:... The multibender doesn't seem to accommodate the thicker string gauge very well. The ball end of the broken string was lodged so firmly that I had to dismantle the whole thing, remove the axle so that I could work on the ball end. ...
I've setup a few of the Dusenberg bridges and did run into something similar with a larger gauge string once. My solution was to use a round bottom nut / jewelers file to clean / widen the channel a bit and then thread a plain ball end onto the string to act as a spacer and keep the fat ball to string transition area out of the grove. The additional ball end "trick" can also help in some situations if your string breakage is happening at the point illustrated in the below pic. Whats at play is that on some strings the end of the wrap lands perfectly right on the fulcrum point of the axle. The additional ball end moves that point back about an 1/8" and off the axle.
Yeah, I also used the additional ball end trick (after all I had one to spare after having salvaged the remains of the broken string, but even that, I'm afraid, won't be enough, so next time it happens I guess I'll use a small washer to keep the ball end from being drawn in.
I've got the bender on a Gretsch 5700...three levers with the third one modified to be a wrist lever, wide and lower down.
String breakage is not a problem, (although I haven't played it all that much yet).
Maybe due to the string gauges - it has an Open-E string set, tuned to E9 (E B G# F# E B, hi-to-lo). Levers are high B->C# (A pedal on a pedal steel), G#->A ( B pedal) and low E->D# (E lower on pedal steel). This gives me a pretty good pedal steel layout...
Strings might also be helped by the roller nut - provides a little more "give", helps the string survive?
I was lucky to find this instrument already modified by a guy who was moving to pedal steel and no longer wanted it..
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Dieter Stoll wrote:
I asked Duesenberg support about their opinion but have yet to receive a reply. If and when I get one I'll post it here.
I did get a reply a few days back, and it was pretty plain and simple: "Yes you are right, looks like we never even considered the possibility of someone using a bender on the lower strings. I have forwarded your mail to our development crew for consideration."
So maybe sometime in the future there will be a more spacious string guidance routing, who knows.
I've been using a Multibender with four levers on a lap steel for several years now. In retrospect, I rarely use more than two of the levers. I also have found that the springs in the unit are not strong enough to return strings four, five or six to pitch if you set a lever up to lower the pitch. Heightening the pitch is always okay, as the natural tendency of the strings is to slacken as you take your hand off the lever. I'm also not very happy about the way the unit is only designed to pull or push one string per lever.
I had an underarm guitar with some same fiendish ball problems, and the best "solution" was to make a small loop out of an old plain string, and stick it through the ball before stringing it up. The times I forgot were the times that reminded me, natch. I did end up waiting for a calmer moment and filing and sanding a few holes bigger; I have found that it's a really bad idea to work on a guitar while you're still pissed off at it.
I finally mustered the courage to crawl out of the woodwork.
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I did end up waiting for a calmer moment and filing and sanding a few holes bigger; I have found that it's a really bad idea to work on a guitar while you're still pissed off at it.