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Topic: Is the C pedal really necessary (or even desired)? |
Steve Leal
From:
Orange CA, USA
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Posted 3 May 2019 3:36 pm |
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| Have a listen to the fill in the middle of the verse of Dwight Yoakam’s “I Sang Dixie†and you’ll hear Tom Brumley playing strings 4 and 6 using C pedal with B pedal and lowering Es. Lots of times, harmonized scales sound fuller using strings 4 and 6 with BC pedals rather than 3 and 5 with AB pedals. Learn em and you’ll use em half the time. |
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James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 17 May 2019 9:09 am
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Does anyone have the E-F# raise on LKV? I don't have a LKV nor have I ever experienced using one, but that seems like a great raise to get everything you can get with the C pedal if you use it when A and B are engaged. Less foot shuffling and (I imagine) more versatility.
Thoughts?
EDIT: https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=157308&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
Last edited by James Mayer on 17 May 2019 10:31 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Curt Trisko
From:
St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
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Posted 17 May 2019 9:47 am
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I'd love to see someone experiment around with this. Like a few of the people in this thread were saying, it definitely seems like the use/placement of the C pedal today came about incidentally instead of by deliberate design.
And James, I'm sure almost all of us had your thought at one point, even if we won't admit it.  For me, when I started learning and creating my own phrases and arrangements, I had to train myself to not touch the C pedal unless I absolutely needed that bend. This may have been mentioned before, but if you're not playing in a minor key, you probably won't miss it.
The reason I'm posting to this thread is that I recently started learning a song in a minor key where the licks, phrasing, and flow rely so heavily on the C pedal that my foot hovers above B+C throughout the song and only moves over to A+B for brief moments. That's the first time it's been like that for me. |
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Ian Rae
From:
Redditch, England
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Posted 17 May 2019 11:38 am
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Steve, I wonder if the coming of the F lever pushed that B&C approach out of fashion. I think I shall learn to use it.
_________________
Make sleeping dogs tell the truth!
Homebuilt keyless U12 7x5, Excel keyless U12 8x8, Williams keyless U12 7x8, Telonics rack and 15" cabs |
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Kevin Fix
From:
Michigan, USA
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Posted 17 May 2019 6:11 pm
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| I have a Sho Bud with Emmons set up. I use the B & C together a lot. |
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Georg Sørtun
From:
Mandal, Agder, Norway
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Posted 17 May 2019 10:19 pm
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| James Mayer wrote: |
| Does anyone have the E-F# raise on LKV? |
I have that change for both string 4 and 8 on my GFI Ultra. Works fine … pretty much eliminates the need for the C pedal, which I no longer have on that PSG as I moved all linkages over to get a "0-A-B" pedal setup.
I prefer the solution I put on my Dekley back in the -80s, where the LKV is solely used to flip the half-note stoppers for both LKL and LKR out of the way to get half/full note raise and lower for both E strings. Kept the C pedal on that PSG but hardly ever use it. |
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Bobby Nelson
From:
North Carolina, USA
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Posted 18 May 2019 4:05 am
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Another vote for keeping the C pedal. Although I'm still very early in the learning stage, The more I go on, the more uses I come across for the C pedal. It adds a whole nother dimension to the E9 I'm finding. I think that close listen to John Hughey can dispel the "uselessness of the C pedal" idea - he seemed to use it all over the place.
https://youtu.be/qDWJySCpnGA?list=PLDIG6OVJm7ZDomXBAa4lp6Zk5ZGmNkeUn |
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Michael Sheehan
From:
Everett, Washington, USA - Heading back to Florida 2021
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Posted 27 May 2019 8:47 am
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Paul Sutherland gives a good demo for the BC pedals here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5AC3qb1K0s
Just for the passing tones on the 1-4-5 chord changes alone makes me see the use of it. |
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Fred Justice
From:
Mesa, Arizona
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Posted 27 May 2019 9:05 am
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Buddy Emmons thought it was,
Who would want to argue with him. 
_________________
Email: azpedalman@gmail.com
Phone: 480-235-8797 |
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Ian Rae
From:
Redditch, England
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Posted 27 May 2019 10:15 am
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Nuff said, Fred. Close it up!
_________________
Make sleeping dogs tell the truth!
Homebuilt keyless U12 7x5, Excel keyless U12 8x8, Williams keyless U12 7x8, Telonics rack and 15" cabs |
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Curt Trisko
From:
St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
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Posted 27 May 2019 10:21 am
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| Ian Rae wrote: |
| Nuff said, Fred. Close it up! |
With all due respect to Buddy, the mainstream of players today don't aspire to play like him... which is good because anyone without a natural gift and a lifetime to devote to the instrument wouldn't be able to anyways. Boom, there it is... close this thread. |
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Rich Peterson
From:
Moorhead, MN
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Posted 27 May 2019 12:50 pm
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| The "C" pedal is essential only to those who know how to use it. |
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Ian Rae
From:
Redditch, England
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Posted 27 May 2019 12:53 pm
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That is profound. And the reason I feel I should master it to avoid missing something.
_________________
Make sleeping dogs tell the truth!
Homebuilt keyless U12 7x5, Excel keyless U12 8x8, Williams keyless U12 7x8, Telonics rack and 15" cabs |
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James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 28 May 2019 8:17 am
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| What's with the obsession for closing threads around here? |
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Marc Jenkins
From:
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
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Posted 28 May 2019 8:24 am
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| James Mayer wrote: |
| What's with the obsession for closing threads around here? |
Steel players’ mic drop? |
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Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
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Posted 28 May 2019 9:57 am
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| Quote: |
| With all due respect to Buddy, the mainstream of players today don't aspire to play like him... |
I don't know if that's true or not, but I tend to doubt it. I guess it depends on what you call "mainstream of players today". And if true, I say "More's the pity.", since Buddy could play pretty much like anything he wanted to. I started later in life and initially focused on Americana and associated approaches, not trad country. More Greg Leisz, who is great too. But I say get as much from as many players as possible, aspire to be as good as possible, and accept whatever comes after a good effort. This does not mean to try to clone anybody, but for a pedal steel player to not at least try to channel important aspects of Buddy Emmons playing seems to me to be like a physicist trying to ignore Newton, Einstein, and Feynmann. Not a good idea, IMHO.
For those who don't know this phrase - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mic_drop. I agree, discussion not over. I had a couple of steels that I tried the E=>F# raise on a lever. I put it in a few different places, wound up preferring it on LKV. My take was that it was cool in addition to, but not instead of, the C pedal, but not cool enough to lose the other levers on my guitars.
I've had quite a lot of pedal steels over the last 15 years and I've tried a lot of different setups on various ones. In the end, I wound up with a fairly standard setup because the people that have been doing this for the last 50-60 years and came up with most of these ideas really did know what the hell they were doing.
I have to confess I really like the setup Johnny Cox described here - https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=341331 - you know, it's possible to find your own way after carefully studying what other people have done. In fact, I think one typically gets a better result that way. Shoulders of giants and all that ... |
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Ian Rae
From:
Redditch, England
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Posted 28 May 2019 11:08 am
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I was being a touch facetious suggesting that one or two contributors may have had the last word. Long may this discussion continue! The whole question of where the PSG is going post-Emmons (and indeed where it was headed before) is an important one.
If the C pedal is redundant why do players ask for it and makers provide it?
_________________
Make sleeping dogs tell the truth!
Homebuilt keyless U12 7x5, Excel keyless U12 8x8, Williams keyless U12 7x8, Telonics rack and 15" cabs |
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Michael Sheehan
From:
Everett, Washington, USA - Heading back to Florida 2021
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Posted 28 May 2019 11:28 am
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| I’m just a raw beginner here, and I’m sure this topic has been discussed before. But I’m glad the conversation is continuing and we aren’t going to close the thread. I need this discussion for my development 😊 |
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Marc Jenkins
From:
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
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Posted 28 May 2019 12:17 pm
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My suggestion to anyone thinking of discarding the C pedal only because it is physically awkward to get to from an AB home base: move your home base a little! I’ve done so recently after years of having to lift my left heel to get to BC. Now, I pivot on my heel, which took some practice for sure, and has made using B and C so much easier.
I can see the advantage of having a dedicated E-F# change, but would never forego the C pedal. There’s so much there, especially moving harmonies! I tend to use it a bit more playing country-ish stuff, but use it frequently when playing more indie/Americana/ folk stuff with atmospherics too. Indispensable for me. |
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James Mayer
From:
back in Portland Oregon, USA (via Arkansas and London, UK)
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Posted 28 May 2019 1:16 pm
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This thread has got me thinking more and more about adding a LKV to get that E->F# raise independently of the 5th string, while also keeping the C pedal where it is if I ever need them to both move at once. There's been quite a few times when I could have used that independence to more easily play a melody.
I'm not sure how much it would cost to have the LKV E-F# added and how much complication it would amount to. |
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Tucker Jackson
From:
Portland, Oregon, USA
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Posted 30 May 2019 9:58 am
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James, here's something you can easily try:
If you want to do a dry-run of the E-to-F# change (where the 5th string doesn't change too), you can just unscrew the nylon tuner for string 5 or your C-pedal so that it's not engaging.
And then when you want to move both strings 4 and 5 up a whole step at the same time, just slide the bar up two frets. That's a move I use at least as much as hitting the C-pedal itself when I'm just picking those two strings.
Other two-string moves that you can do to replace the BC pedal in a given fret:
On strings 3 and 4 (or its same-note analogue, 6 and 4), you can slide up one fret and hit the knee lever that raises string 4.
And of course if you're hitting strings 5 and 6, the AB pedals give the same notes as BC, so no need for a C pedal there.
You can get most of the sounds you want using alternatives to an actual C-pedal if you're playing 2-note harmony. But when you need that pedal, you need it. For example, if you wanted to hit 3 strings at once, say, 3-4-5, you would need BC to do that.
But if you're playing in a band, 2-note harmony has a tendency to blend better than 3-note things as a general rule, so a person could get a lot done on just 1 or 2 strings using bar moves and a knee lever. I love my C-pedal, but I could probably get through most gigs using the alternatives listed above. |
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