another "gizmo" question?

[Rick Schmidt]

I was wondering if anyone's ever come up with some way to quickly activate or de-activate one pull on the same lever? On my extended 12 string E9 I'm always wishing I could sometimes raise my lowest E to F (on the F lever)...and then sometimes NOT raise it when I use it in conjunction with a zero pedal that lowers the low E to C# for some really cool stuff. I do the loosening of the nylon tuner thing when I want to use the different approach, but I sure wish there was a gizmo that I could switch on the fly. Probably just a pipe dream I know.

[Earnest Bovine]

This doesn't answer your question directly, but maybe you could get what you want out of the F lever and P0 by putting another pull on your P0. The new pull would raise low E a little more than a half step. You would also keep the lower on that same string, same pedal, but now it would have to pull a little more to get down to C#. The advantage is that when you are pulled down to C#, the F lever will have no effect on that low E string, and it will stay at C#.

[Gary Shepherd]

I've never heard of such a gizmo but a couple of idea come to mind. Neither of which would be very accurate.

1. You could put some sort of hinge on the bellcrank end. When you want the pull active, flip the hinge to that the pullrod is against the bellcrank.

2. Put a "T" on the changer end of the pullrod and slot the nylong hex nut to grab it - pull it into the hex nut's slot. Then you'd need only a half-twist of the hex nut to engage the pull.

Like I said, I don't think either of these methods would be very accurate but maybe one of my ideas will give someone else a better idea and we can go from there.

3. Ok it just happened. It might work a little better to create a bellcrank with some sort of hinge. Flip the hinge to engage the pull when needed. Flip it back to disengage the pull.

This idea might be usefull on my 8th string. I'd like to raise #8 to F# on my C pedal but I don't always need/want that pull active.

------------------
Gary Shepherd

Carter D-10

www.16tracks.com

[Jon Light (deceased)]

Hey Rick--I know nothing of the technology Bill Rudolph uses with his Williams crossover steel but I wonder whether there's something in his idea that can be retrofitted onto another guitar, onto a single string. Maybe (if you are motivated enough to commission some engineering & consultation with him) there is a solution to be found there.

[Steven Black]

A changelock is usually used on an Excel U12 guitar to change the strings tunning, Fuzzi builds these guitars, and Sierra uses something like that on their guitars.