Someone to Watch Over Me

[Earnest Bovine]

Wow. I see that Sez uses a very ordinary C6 setup. It is his playing and choice of notes that is extraordinary.

[Earnest Bovine]

I hope to get ... RKL equipped with a half stop to .. raise strings 4 & 8 [A strings] by a semitone, then through the half stop to a whole tone

I have that lever on RKR and I like it a lot. It may be my most used pedal or lever. On my C6 it pulls only one string, the A in the middle, which greatly simplifies the tuning of the half stop. I have a pedal for A to B flat on both A strings, and no way to raise the low A string a whole step.

[Doug Beaumier]

'top 40' country song

just shows ya what I don't listen to...

same here, Gary. I try to avoid the stuff, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

[Gary Lee Gimble]

sometimes it's unavoidable.

pending said gig...

[Sez Adamson]

@ Gary. Thank you so much for Posting my set-up.
I have one additional little trick that I have since added.
I 'fiddled' with the bell-crank holes on strings 3 & 4.
When I push pedal 7, string 3 now moves first. When it gets to C#, string 4 comes in, and they both then move up together to D & B respectively.
This simulates the C to C# lever that I see some people use, but without having to re-assign a lever from other duty. And the 4th string coming in acts as a 'feel' stop.

As I understand it, this set-up (with specific reference to the splits) will not work on a Push Pull instrument, as the raises will over-ride the lowers.

@ Ernest. I did set up my Emmons with the A to Bb to B on 4 & 8, borrowing the half stop assembly from the second string E9th. I was able to tune both strings well, but I was not able to adequately 'feel' the half stop. I use some fast moves to the Ab notes on 4 & 8, and without the right amount of pressure, I kept over-shooting the Bb note. Maybe a stronger half stop assembly would help, but the change did not feel comfortable so I changed back to Rkl (for the Bb's, and P4 (for the B's). I'll have another look at this in the future.

You are correct in that the bulk of my set-up is pretty standard. But the Left knee lever cluster makes all the difference for me. The standard setup enables me to get the basic chords (maj7, mi7 etc). But the additional knee lever cluster enables me to turn these into more exotic sounding shapes, usually by simply changing one note in the more basic chords. And I am able to find the basic chords in more positions, thereby enabling me to stay in the same playing area on the instrument without having to jump up and down the neck.

Observation: I notice that a lot of people lower the 4th string from A to Ab.
My Lkr raises the 5th string from G to G#, which is the same note. I have looked at both, but find the 5th string raise provides me with more options.
I should also say that having got used to this set-up, I could not fore-go any of my existing changes for something additional. I am pretty happy with things as they are, but if I wanted to expand my repertoire of changes, it would have to be more pedals / levers.

@Peter: I see you will be in Dublin as well, and I look forward to meeting you there. I won't have my own Steel. I was actually going on Holiday, and Ted Nesbitt co-opted me into playing at the Festival. He will lend me a Williams D-10 and I am bringing one pull train assembly with me from my own WIlliams, so that I can play one Chord Melody tune. The rest will be E9th stuff.

Thanks to you all for showing interest. I really do appreciate it very much.
Sez

[Nick Powers]

Sez, you did it again.
your ear, your taste, & your technique are just astounding.
now if i only owned a record company...
all the best.