midi pedal steel

[chuck abend]

Hi"I'm a new member.I'm playing a universal
12 8+10 Zumsteel,with a lever lock to lock
the e strings to D#.I added 5 more secondary
raises on the rods which I hardly ever have
to retune.Bruce Zumsteg said no one could it
but me.I have two complete 12 stg guitars on
one neck with 5 knee levers for each tuning.
This works great for playing midi such as
piano fills or any synth.
I need old broken pickups like 6 stg kramer
guitar pitch riders 'to take apart to reuse
the small pin bobbins ,magnets,and amp.
will consider inop pitch riders also.
Thanks Chuck Abend
email-countrysteel@hotmail.com

[Jack Stoner]

Chuck, welcome to the Forum. Haven't talked to you since I left KC. How's things going?

[Jim Smith]

Hey guys, Chuck is one super fellow and maybe the only one of his kind! I spent some time with him in St. Louis and ended up buying his last 12 string MIDI pickup. He does a super job of building steel guitar MIDI pickups from the bobbins of broken 6 string PitchRider MIDI pickups, but can't make any more until he finds some more parts.

The pickups he makes are much more durable, using thicker wires from the pickup to the preamp box, not the actual pickup wires like IVL did. Also his pickup is covered with heatshrink tubing so they can be repaired if necessary, instead of being encased in epoxy.

[Dave Van Allen]

Chuck- can you take a broken IVL pickup (10 string) and create a working 10 string PU from it? If so we need to talk.

[Jim Smith]

The way he explained it to me, since the steel MIDI pickups are encased in epoxy, they can't be fixed. That's why he's looking for six string MIDI pickups which were only covered with heat shrink tubing. Even at that, he said he's only averaged 30-50% success rate in popping those individual coils out and making steel pickups with them.