That being said, much of it deals with his 1KL set up as per Winnie's book. My question is what was his set up with his old Fender guitars? Same but without the knee lever?

James

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Some kind of Sho-Bud Frankenstein guitar
Standel 50L12
Standel S80

Mooney plays like NO other. He is unique indeed.

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Livin' in the Past and the Future with a 12 string Mooney Universal tuning.

You are correct about raising the E to F# with pedal #4. You heard him use that pedal on "Rainy Day Woman" (Waylon Jennings).
I can play that on a standard E9. The E and B are raised with the same pedal on a standard setup but you only pick the E and G# while raising the E.

Here goes. I will attempt to put Mooneys original 8 string setup here.

OPEN          PEDALS
    
      1    2    3    4
1.G#           +A
2.E                 +F#
3.B       +C#  +C#      
4.G# +A   +A
5.F#
6.E
7.D
8.B

That is, when he walks up the strings beginning with the 8th string he ends up with an A and C# notes on string 6 and 5 respectfully (pedals down). Then he wants to rapid fire RAISE his 4th sting to an F#. NOT simply reach up and pick an F# like on our 1st string.

This requires that he have a separate pedal raising the E to F#. He does a similar movement that requires the two G# to A pulls NOT be on the same pedal.

Having said that I have seen some Mooney protege's almost duplicate it. But it requires some difficult manuevering and precise blocking; plus it sometimes requires that a person use their right foot tickling the C pedal while A and B are both down.

When Buddy Emmons did it long ago, that is what he did. He would come off his volume pedal, and with A and B down, go all the way to pedal 3 and tap the C pedal to get one of those classic Mooney licks.

If you listen carefully to all those classics when Ralph was putting Buck Owens on the charts, and you wish to get "THAT" sound, IMO, you are going to need an original Fender PSG, a Fender tube amp and his tuning. Which means both feet often!

I simply do not believe "that" sound and those awesome stocatto regular guitar licks can be achieved with the standard E9th tuning. Yes, some can come close, but "ya really had to be there", and ya gotta tune like he does if ya wanna duplicate it.

Or that is my take on it. May Jesus richly bless Ralph for his unprecedented contribution to the world of true country music. And may he bring all of you joy always,

carl

[This message was edited by C Dixon on 30 June 2004 at 07:57 AM.]

When you post a tuning on this thread, the forum software will "truncate" all multiple spaces down to one space.

You can tell it NOT to do this, IF you simply add "[ tab ]" before the setup; and add "[ /tab ]" at the end of the setup.

NOTE: Don't use the quotation marks and spaces around the word tab.

Try it

      1  2  3  4
G#          A
E              F#
B        C#
G#    A  A
F#
D
B
E

John, are you sure he pulled both the 3rd and 4th strings on pedal 2?

I sincerely believe you. I do have a problem on the high G# string on the Fender 400's and 1000's however. I owned a 400 with 6 pedals. NOt only could I not raise that high G# to an A but I often could not even bring it up to an G# without it often breaking before it got to G#.

In talking with others who owned them, similar stories and some on this forum have concurred with the problem I had. The interesting thing was that when Fender switched to the 800/2000 models with the ShoBud type moving bridge, no more premature breakage of strings.

I am wondering what Ralph was able to do about the breakage? Incidently the string broke right at the top of the fixed bridge as the string was pulled over it. Later Fender came out with rollers for the fixed bridges. It did not help one bit in my case.

Do you know what Ralph might have been doing to stop the incessant breakage. Most did indeed tune down to Eb9 or D9 to get around the problem as I understand it.

Again dear friend, I am in NO way disputing you. I am just relating my own experinces and those of a number of others who owned them

IMHO, to get the Mooney licks on a standard E9, two changes are necessary:

1) an independent raise of a whole tone on the high E string, best suited on a pedal like p.8, and

2) a 1/2 tone lower on the high G# string most preferably, or a 1/2 tone raise on the F# string.

I have a Fender 1000 that has the Mooney changes on it. When trying to emulate the man's playing, it's easiest when you have his tuning. The 1000 I have is the short-scale (23") model, so the G# raise is no problem.

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Herb's Steel Guitar Pages
Texas Steel Guitar Association

Cuz he responded, "No tone".

Upon looking at his amp, the bass, mid and treble were all at 0.

Only Ralph would say that. Or do that (probably). But then nobody can play like that. Truly one of the most unique and awesome steel guitar players of all time.

As the late and great Phil Baugh once said to the late and great Thumbs Carlisle (on the stage of the ISGC) after Thumbs had dazzled us with his wizardry,

"Thumbs, NOBODY can do that! NOT even YOU!!"

We must always remember that pure genius is not the norm. I'm sure the greatest of players will agree, that Ralph's unique style is a stroke of genius.

I never tire of seeing Ralph perform. If he played clubs, I would probably be there every night.

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84 SKH Emmons Legrand D10
session 400'rd Steelin for my Lord.

[This message was edited by Terry Sneed on 10 July 2004 at 05:37 PM.]

However, in view of Terry's point, one does have to wonder why at least one current PSG builder is not offering Fender-style guitars. Perhaps weight is a major issue (from the large metal frames of the Fender PSG's)(?). Or maybe the casting would be too expensive for the demand.

How would you use hog rings to help with string breakage?

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Livin' in the Past and the Future with a 12 string Mooney Universal tuning.

quote:

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They didn't want to be in the business of making custom instruments - not enough profit when compared to mass producing Stratocasters.

---

I'd venture that if you were to put down about 12 grand and asked them to build you a Fender psg, they'd probably be more than willing to oblige.

However, Fender knows that it wouldn't be worth their trouble to build psg's for what a small shop can build them for.