Pedal adjustments on Fender 400

[Dan Campbell]

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Just got this fender 400 in remarkably good shape. I want to tune it to the bottom 8 of an E9th and set up the pedals. How does one go about adjusting the pulleys for the pedals, and how do you tune the pedals?

[Paul Strojan]

There are screws on the end plate that control how far the the pulls travel; loosening them increases the amount of change (raise or lower) while tightening them reduces the amount of change. There are turnbuckles that control how much slack is in the cables.
I have slide king wrist bender set up with the bottom 8 strings of an E9 with just to changes and there is a lot of good music in it.
G#
E
B to C#(a)
G# to A (b)
F#
E
D
C#
The two things I miss most glaringly are the E to D# knee lever and the E to F# C pedal change. With $20 and a couple trips to the hardware store, knee levers can be easily added.
Here is how I would set up your guitar, so that you would be able to hit the ground running if you ever decided to go to a 10 string E9. To keep things consistent with the rest of pedal world , I am going to refer to strings 3-10 because we don’t have strings 1 and 2.

3. G#
4. E
5. B
6. G#
7. F#
8. E
9. D
10. B
Pedal O Lowers string 5 to A & string 6 to F#
Pedal A Raises strings 5 & 10 to C#
Pedal B Raises strings 3 & 6 to A
Pedal C Raises string 4 to F# and 5 to C# on the same finger as pedal A
Left knee left raises string 8 to F
RKL lowers strings 4 and 8 to D#

[Ian Worley]

There is a pdf of a 400 owner's manual here: https://steelguitar.com/manuals/Fender4 ... Manual.pdf. Yours is an earlier long scale model, the manual is for the later short scale version, but the tuning procedure is the same. Have fun!

[Dan Campbell]

A big thanks to Ian and Paul for this very valuable information. You guys are the best! Dan

[K Maul]

There’s a good page on Facebook for Fender pedal steel so you might check that out. A lot of good information there. Do not tighten the turnbuckles too tight on the cables - just enough to make the pedals respond quickly. Be very careful not to overtighten - you’ll notice if you watch the changers underneath so that if you tighten those cables too much, it will start to pull the strings out of tune. Plus, the cable could stretch and make the whole thing a big mess if that hasn’t already happened. Also be very aware of that a Fender 400 of this era, being a long-scale, is not always friendly to E9. The top G# can be very susceptible to breakage. Not everyone has this problem, but many have. You could possibly fix this by tuning down to D9 which many people did back in the 50s.