400 copedent.

[Robert Murphy]

I am getting a 1965 4 pedal Fender 400. Since I play C6 lap steel I am looking for set up advice. I play rock, blues, country, folk and popular music from the Great American Songbook. I need major, minor, dom 7, major 7 chords. What is the most practical string set and pedal pull. Thanks.

[Andrew Frost]

With 8 strings, 4 pedals and no levers, you could use this set up for C6...

.................1.............2..............3.................4............

E------------------F------------
C-----B-------------------D----
A-------------------------B----
G-----------F#----------------
E------------------Eb-----------
C------------------------------
A------------------------------
F------------D-----------------

This is pretty much pedal 567 of 'standard' C6, plus the B lower which would usually be on a lever.
Having F on the bottom allows you get all the F based voicings normally based on string 9 (of a 10 string C6 set up). Note that the F drops to D so that you get the low root of D9 on pedal 2 , but also creates the 7#9 ( boo-wah ) chord with the pedal bedside it. That said, I'm not sure how easy it is to drop a string three semitones on a fender 400.

[Ian Worley]

Are you familiar at all with standard E9 PSG tuning? Something similar to Al Perkins' 8 string E7 tuning would work well for rock, blues and most other things, pared down to work with only four pedals and no knees.

Tuned high to low G# E B G# E D B E.
first pedal raise the Es on strings 2 and 5 a half step;
second pedal raise the Bs on 3 and 7 a whole step;
third pedal raise the G#s on 1 and 4 a half step;
fourth pedal to lower the Es on strings 2 and 5 a half step.

That gives you something similar to E9 A and B pedals, plus raising and lowering of the Es like E9 E and F levers. All the individual and adjacent two-pedal combinations work as something useful, Major, minor, Dom7, Maj7, diminished, all there, plus lot of cool licks. The nice thing about old cable Fenders is it's super easy to try out all sorts of different copedents

Here's Al on his 1000 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTSS1Sx04lo&.

[Robert Murphy]

Ion I like your suggestion. I do play a GFI E9 Emmons so this makes sense already. PS that’s the second time someone sent me that link to FBB.

[Andrew Frost]

Since I play C6 lap steel I am looking for set up advice

So you don't want a C6 tuning suggestion? I misread your inquiry....

[Robert Murphy]

There’s the problem. I am familiar with C6 lap steel and E9 pedal steel. Just trying to reduce the learning curve.