Hi guys and gals,
I’m getting many emails concerning pedal and knee lever setups and questions concerning the Z lever setup. I will answer these questions one at a time the way they were presented to me.
Question: I have spend $150. extra for an up knee lever on my steel that seems to me to be a total waste as I can see many other ways to do the same thing. Am I wrong or have I thrown away my $150.
Answer: You can always find something to do with it, however, I feel this is definitely a waste of $150.
Question: Because I can’t figure out what to do and how to use this knee lever that lowers 5 and 10, why should I believe that I can get to use the Z knee lever?
Answer: First of all, the Z lever is not just another way to get a chord or another lick, but opens the door to a whole new playing style by introducing a vast array of easy to get chords. The Z lever is also kind of like an eraser on a pencil in the respect that anytime you hit a bad note on your E9th tuning, you can push the Z lever and that bad note will suddenly blend in with the chord you are after. Many people call the Z lever the magic knee lever.
Question: How can the Z lever blend in with my standard tuning?
Answer: The perfect place for the Z lever on a standard setup guitar is the right knee lever left position as this is another knee lever that is somewhat useless in the overall picture of playing good steel guitar. Remember, these are advanced steel guitar secrets that I’m revealing here and not simple old worn-out, tired, yesteryear tidbits.
To play the most with the least and be as standard as possible, the perfect setup would be 3 pedals in the ABC configuration and 4 knee levers setup like LKL raises the E’s … LKR lowers the E’s … RKL the Z lever which lowers the second string a half tone, raises the seventh string a whole tone and lowers the ninth string a half tone. This setup is very close to standard with the exception of the Z lever which you will find can be the most useful lever on your steel guitar with very little practice or instruction and of course, the RKR now can lower the second string a whole tone only now.
Two of these knee levers, no matter where they are on your guitar, are the standards of the industry and need to be on every steel guitar. This is raising and lowering the E’s. Where these are placed on your steel guitar is really not important except that these are two knees that cannot be used at the same time, so why not put them on the same leg since you can’t make one leg go in two directions at the same time anyway?
This setup has been created over the past 45 years of experimenting, listening and watching all professional players and consulting with several music majors in how to accomplish the most with the least.
As you watch my video tab series, only the basic knee levers are going to be used. I will be playing the instructive material on a standard setup guitar as a convienence to you, however, it doesn’t matter where you raise and lower your E’s … (which knee levers) just where you see me lowering my E’s, you just lower your E’s where you lower your E’s. Most of the licks on the video tab will only involve raising and lowering the E’s so it doesn’t matter where you do it on your guitar.
Believe me, if you add the Z knee lever to your guitar, you won’t have to worry about learning how to play it. I’ll have many tapes out on this subject in the future, besides, it will just about play itself anyway. If you put it on, you will use it.
Lowering 5 and 6 with a pedal and lowering 5 and 10 with a knee lever are two recent fad knee levers that have very little merit to musically compared to the Z lever.
Question: How hard is the knee lever to put on the steel guitar?
Answer: It should be very easy to install and your guitar should already have two of the pull rods and bell cranks needed but you will probably need to purchase a third bell crank, pull rod and nylon tuner nut. These can usually be had for as little $35. from us or from the factory. I will be glad to add this lever labor free at my store for just the price of the parts if you don’t want to do it yourself. Of course this pertains only to major brand guitars. For home-made guitars, you can get the parts from the builder.
Video Tab, Volume Two is ready to ship. It’s available on the website at $39.99 and available to my mailing list members at $29.99 for the next two weeks. Volume Two picks up where Volume One left off … and the section on harmonics is worth the price of the video all by itself … and there’s so much more information than that. It’s certainly a lot less expensive than a private one-on-one lesson and what’s even better than a private lesson is the fact that you can play this lesson over and over again as many times as you need. to.
Click here for the special price for mailing list members.
or type in the web address … http://www.steelguitar.net/sale.html
Bobbe
www.steelguitar.net
sales@steelguitar.net
