Williams 12 String Keyless Pedal Steel Guitar



Here's some pictures, sound files and comments on my new Williams keyless 12 string pedal steel guitar. It has 4 floor pedals and 6 knee levers. The basic tuning is an extended E9 with low G# and E strings.
  • The fit and finish of all the metal and wood parts is awesome! The lacquer finish is stunning in person.
  • Pedal pulls have even tension throughout the activation range and stops are very positive with good feedback when they bottom out. A definite improvement in feel over the model 400 I had a few years ago.
  • It only took about an hour to bond with this guitar. I can pretty much love or hate the feel and quirks of a guitar in a few minutes. Nothing here to fight with or get in the way of your playing. The feel of the pedals and knee levers is just great. The locations of the knee levers front to back and left to right including the tandem lever offset is perfect for me. No shifting in the seat or going through weird contortions to operate the tandem knee levers. The compact body makes it look like a buff, it has 12 cylinders, uses them all and a overdrive that just won't stall! Actually the compact body provides a great platform for spacing the knee levers the way I like them.
  • This guitar is super compact and light! It weighs 26.9 pounds and the case weighs 31.1 pounds.
  • You can see in the pics below that the case is extremely rugged. The guitar was shipped in the case surrounded by double wall cardboard with the retracted handle accesible and usable to transport the package. It arrived in perfect condition. Two temporary hardwood spacers were added to the case's pedal board divider to strengthen it for shipping. A nice touch!
  • The actual color is "burnt orange" and pretty much matches the color of the Jim Vest Sho-Bud I used to own. Wood is curly maple. The outdoor pictures show the true color.
  • The guitar end plates are 8.25" wide, the distance from the floor to the lowest point on the back apron is 25.5" and the overall guitar length is 29"
  • A nice set of tools was included and split tuning screws were provided to be added by the user as needed.
  • The guitar was delivered a few weeks early. Bill Rudolph is a man of his word when it comes to delivering on time. This is my second Williams guitar and the first one was delivered exactly on the day that Bill promised delivery. I gave Bill a deposit on May10,2016 and the guitar was delivered on September 29,2016
  • Guitar is a model 700 single 12 wide body keyless with the following options: extra floor pedal, extra tandem knee lever, front ablaone inlay, ATA flight case.
  • Pickup is a Wallace True Tone at 19.44 kohms.
  • As much as possible Bill matched the tandem offset on my Sho-Bud knee levers based on pictures and measurements I provided.

Some useful links:



Click here to listen to a complete song with my new Williams steel!

Hear Honky Tonk on the lower E9th extended strings!



C Copedant - subject to change!





Peavey Nashville 400 Sound Samples



Here's some sound samples from my first hour of playing this guitar. All samples use the Hall of Fame reverb set on "CHURCH", Goodrich volume pedal with a Dunlop Hotpotz, 12' of George L's cable between the amp and volume pedal to roll the highs off a bit, Peavey Nashville 400 amp with factory mod mic'd with a Shure SM-57. All samples recorded onto a Zoom R24 then ported to Reaper to convert them to mp3 files at 320 kbps. This is fresh out of the box with the tuning quickly tweaked by ear.

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Here's my first attempt at using strings 11 and 12 to get some C6 type sounds. Amazingly (to me) all of the C6 (B6 open) note pockets are in intuitive spots and most all of the single string C6 riffs are easily played. The low E9th D string acts a lot like the C6 pedal that lowers the C6 low E string to a D#. This is a very powerful tuning even without all the C6 equivalent pedals. And all in a lightweight, compact and easy to transport package!





Fender Steel King Sound Samples

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Silkyn Tube Amp Samples

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There are quite a few pictures below. Click on them to see them full size or at least sized to a browser window. Click on the picture again if needed to zoom in even more!







Comments? email webmaster Greg


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