Day to Emmons conversion
I swapped bell cranks on A and C pedals and changed LKR to push mechanism (lowering E’s) and LKL to pull (raising E’s). The A pedal now required a longer pull rod on string 10 for which I used 308L stainless welding rod (hole drilled at one end).
C pedal necessitated a longer throw to make the E to F# pull and adjustments were made to allow room for the E levers to have enough freedom of travel on the 4th string pull rod. A problem stabilising the 4th string E to F raise was down to the bellcrank coming loose so I’ve tightened that down and also added loctite to the tuning screw on that rod.
Tuning the changer
After checking the tension strings I tuned the changer to Jeff Newman’s SE9/SP9 Peterson sweeteners and adjusted all the pulls and stops accordingly.
Setup
Fine tuning the setup required adjusting stops, spacers and set collars, taking out some slack on the push rods, adding or changing length of various shock springs to time the travel of raise fingers, and attempting to balance semitone feel stops on 1st string raise and 2nd string lower.
It was decided to keep the 6th string whole tone lower which also acted as the 1st string feel stop (rather than change to 7th string raise). In the end the feel stops are there but a little on the soft side. I added fresh loctite to many of the stop screws including at the changer to enhance tuning stability. I snugged up all the body screws underneath (making sure not to over tighten neck screws which can affect sustain) and tightened the set screws on all the collars and bell cranks.
Height
The height of the guitar has been raised using 1/2 inch collars on the front legs. Accordingly the pedal rods have been lengthened with 1/2”, 3/8" Hex, 10-32 thread standoffs in two cases (one of the rods is longer than the others). There isn’t much if any adjustability so if pedal height needs to be altered either the rods may need to be cut at the thread end or 1/4” standoffs sourced, or possibly both.
Cosmetics
I gave the deck a surface clean and finished with Music Nomad One polish and I cleaned the pad with leather upholstery wipes. I also lightly polished the chrome with Simichrome.
Lubrication
The guitar was well oiled so I didn’t add much extra, just a small drop on cross rod axels and between the rollers.
