Pedal Steel Guitar Changer Finger

Demonstration of a homemade pedal steel guitar pull finger and a testing jig.

Pedal steel guitar changer finger.

Tune the changer for the pedal or knee lever that you are setting up reach under the guitar and push the bridge finger for one of the strings you plan to raise left all the way until it hits the body of the guitar. Doing that seemed to lessen the force needed to raise the strings. The changer is the heart of a pedal steel guitar. Makin chips changer finger stops.

The end result is a finger with much less internal friction and undesired movement in the changer and provides a harder surface much more resistant to scratching. I tried something similar to that but ended up using two cables to a pedal where there were two pulls involved. Our stainless steel finger is manufactured by a unique process by which powdered metal is formed under extreme pressure and high heat to create a part much harder than its original starting material. In this configuration the raise finger goes up and around the bridge pin finger shaft and resides next to the control finger.

The part is then precision ground to 001 total tolerance and polished. A number of stock steel guitar pedals have two holes for pedal rod connectors so this was easy to do. On the underside of the body you ll see the pedal rods attached to cross rods. It contains 1 rivet which connects the raise and lower fingers.

This movie shows ross shafer making changer finger stops for the new sierra pedal steel guitar. Hold it there and tune with the left hand at the keyhead tune the string to the note you want it hit when you raise it. The pedal rods rotate the cross rods and are stopped by the pedal stops. The pedal stop may or may not be adjustable on your steel guitar.

On guitars with modern all pull changers there are 2 basic types of mechanisms.