Advice on getting narrower pedals into a Williams s12

[Ethan Lee]

Tl;dnr: does anyone have experience changing out pedals or whole pedal bars between brands? Looking to retrofit narrower pedals or a new pedal bar with narrower pedals onto a williams S12


I have struggled for the past three years with the narrow pedal spacing on my Williams s12; they are wide, and flat; it’s 1&5/8 inches between pairs of pedals, as opposed to 1&7/8 on the Justice s10 I recently acquired, and on the MSA Classic s10 on which I started. On the williams I have found I can only play moderately precisely with the narrowest wingtip shoes, and even then I get caught and misspedal nontrivially often. I have tried for 3 years to adapt to this but getting this Justice has shown me I shouldn’t have to!

So! I am trying to figure out how to retrofit a different brand of narrower, preferably sculpted-tip pedals into this steel. The builder, Bill Rudolph, advised me a machinist could narrow them an 1/8 of an inch on both sides, and that would be the easiest, but also that going too narrow would weaken them somewhat. I also would prefer less-sharp, rounded pedal tips if possible. Jim Palenscar has said he may be able to help me in southern california, but it’s hard for me to get it to him, and I’ll still need to know what pedals could be shoehorned into the Williams pedal bar the easiest, as the Justice pedals (which feel very easy/natural for me to foot) come on a bolted-on platform the pivot cylinder is not attached to the pedals, and are just not easily fungible into the Williams bar.

Does anybody have any experience with this? I’d think it would be a kind of common desire, as I have non-huge feet, 10.5 size, and have struggled with this one aspect of the Williams since I got it.

Thanks,

Ethan

[Bob Carlucci]

You need to know what pedals you like and are most comfortable with..
Hopefully it will be from a current manufacturer..
Then, why not send just the pedal rack out to Jim have the pedals you want fitted into the Willy rack?..no need to send the entire guitar. Its only aluminum channel stock, I am sure Jim can get pedals other than Williams in there, if not, he can most likely make you a rack fitted with pedals you want.. If you have to buy 8 new pedals from a current builder, plus have them professionally fitted into the Willy rack, or a new rack built, you are looking at a sizeable sum of money,,, If it were me, I would have the stock pedals cut down 1/8 on each side, and have the resulting sharp edges rounded down a bit and polished.. Ever consider changing shoe type, or consider playing in mocs or socks,, or something along those lines??.. I have had several steels over the years that I hated the pedal design, and could not abide... Typically those guitars were sold off to someone that had no issues with the pedals, and I simply moved on to what I really wanted... Just another thought... bob

[Jim Pitman]

Yes, you could cut down the width of the current pedals however, the distance between pedals is dictated by cross shaft spacing ultimately so unless you completely redo the undercarriage, you may be out of luck on that point.

[Erv Niehaus]

Your best bet would be to narrow down your existing pedals.
You cannot move them further apart without a LOT of work as Jim said.

[Ethan Lee]

Thanks for the responses!

I have assessed the sides of the Williams pedals, and found they are perfectly flat, not even chromed like the top and bottom anyway, and will be easy to thin down on a basic belt sander if I need to. A local metalworker has agreed to help me do a good job.

I’ll probably do a couple of them myself, to figure out how much removal and sculpting I really need, and then have this actual machinist do them all evenly and polish them up.

I’ll report back, whether it goes well or badly, and then of course I may well try the other options, having Palenscar fit new pedals or trying to buy a whole rack myself.

(I have somewhat ‘special’ needs in a steel, as I am inventing my own copedents and the Williams is Super easy to work on/reimagine, and getting the pedals to ‘feel’ right is sort of my final boss and paramount to figuring out whether I can achieve my goals with my existing steels or have to keep ‘inventing’ (at great cost in ‘fluency’/gigging and recording competently with existing copedents) and eventually commission a new custom build perfected for my needs

(I am more a ‘thinker’ of the instrument than any great shakes at playing it)

Thanks for the help,

Ethan