Intro

The pedal steel guitar is a unique instrument, in that many if not most of the pedal steel guitars used by the top players are themselves unique.

It's not just a matter of tuning. Two pedal steels that look identical may play very differently even if the open-string tuning and stringing are also identical, depending on the pedal setup or copedent.

Background and terminology

Skip this section if you're familiar with basic pedal steel terminology.

Pedal steel guitars have one or two necks, with from ten to fifteen strings on a neck (and the same number on each neck if there are two). They have from three to ten pedals, and also from one to six knee levers, which have the same function as a pedal but are operated instead by the knees.

The standard student instrument is a ten-string single-neck with one to five knee levers and three pedals, and a standard copedent, the extra knee levers if present adding extra functions (or pulls) which are simply unavailable if the corresponding lever is absent. Its tuning is a particular variation of E9 tuning.

Professional instruments are always custom-made to order, and are given a code that indicates the number of necks and strings and some information on the copedent(s) for which they are intended. The most common and the standard professional instrument is a D-10 with eight pedals and five knee levers. The D indicates that it has two necks, and the 10 indicates that there are ten strings per neck. On a D-10 the nearer neck to the player is normally tuned to C6 and the further to E9. The number of pedals and knee levers varies, and even between two D-10s with the same number of pedals and levers there is some variation to their functions.

Other reasonably famous configurations include: S-10, single neck with ten strings and E9 tuning; S-12, one twelve string neck with extended E9 tuning; U-12, one twelve string neck with universal tuning; U-15, one fifteen string neck with universal tuning, and D-12, two necks each with twelve strings and various tunings based on the standard D-10.

Technically a mass-produced student instrument might be an S-10, but traditionally the code S-10 is reserved for professional instruments.

To specify a copedent three things are required:

• The string gauges.
• The string tunings.
• The pedal and lever functions. These are normally shown in a copedent chart.

In a copedent chart, the knee levers are given codes such as LKR which indicates a lever to the right of the left knee, or RKV which indicates a lever above ("Vertical") the right knee. If there are five knee levers, the single vertical lever may be indicated simply by "V"; Otherwise the lever codes are all three-letter with "K" in the middle (for "kick"! - fooled you, didn't we? No seriously, that's what it stands for), preceded by "L" or "R" for left or right knee and followed by "L", "R" or "V" to indicate the position of the lever relative to the knee.

The pedals are all normally worked by the left foot, with the right controlling a volume pedal, and are numbered from the player's left. Some copendent charts number the pedals from 1, others assign numbers first to the left knee levers (although these numbers are not used in the chart, they may be used in setup instructions) so if there are three left knee levers the leftmost pedal would be numbered 4, the next pedal 5 and so on. Pedals may be given a prefix "P" or not, so the leftmost pedal in an instrument with three left knee levers could be called 1, 4, P1 or P4. Wait there's more... some charts (logically enough) put the pedals between the LKL and LKR levers!

But fortunately, the exact conventions being used are obvious from the chart - once you know the possibilities!

Student and S-10 tunings

"Nashville" E9 tuning:

• B - D - E - F# - G# - B - E - G# - D# - F#  (NB: reentry between string 2 D# and string 3 G#)

String gauges:

La Bella 250 E9: .013 .015 .011 .014 .018 .022 .026w .030w .036w .038w

D-10 tunings

Near neck "Texas" C6 tuning:

• C - F - A - C - E - G - A - C - E - G

String gauges:

La Bella 250 C6: .012 .014 .018 .022 .024w .030w .036w .042w .056w .070w

Far neck "Nashville" just like an S-10.

External links

http://b0b.com/tunings/index.html  lots of copedents