The Steel Guitar Forum

Hmmm, I'm not sure "Perfect Pitch" has officially been defined. If it means immediately identifying any and all ET pitches at a 440 Hz standard then I agree that it is not particularly helpful to building a deeper musical understanding and "feel" for how things ultimately should ...

Anytime I play with a group of musicians, I always get them to play an A triad...first position on the guitar, after he has tuned up, and middle if it's a piano. I check my pedals down open fret A chord against that. That's exactly how I tune too. There, the A should be 440 Hz, right? Unless the pi...

Most pianos are stretch tuned to account for different pitch responses as the strings become smaller. So even ET will not put you in perfect sync. It's possible that a sample player piano could be tuned to ET, but such an instrument probably doesn't sound at all good - too synthetic. If possible, di...

Fred, I'm very curious to learn more about your copedent. Is there a link with more information? One thing that surprises me about deep "Jazz" players is that some are able to take those apparent "ugly" series of tones and make something beautiful with them. Just why is a mystery...

Yupp. I still continue soul searching over what it is I want to hear and portray in music and agree that many performers, no matter what style they apply themselves to, do not trigger a "must listen" reaction. A person can definitely over-intellectualize a subject and in doing so miss the ...

Hi Del, That might be a very common problem. To approach this with a "Think Tank" mindset, I think there are 4 primary signal processing modifications to the sound that should help: 1. Tube amp response 2. Temporal dispersion (delay and reverb effects) 3. Speaker response 4. Dynamic manipu...

Lots of really interesting perceptions, and many which I already have experienced in the last decade or two... If I may... The ONE thing which might possibly deaden the ear of any sophisticated Jazz listener upon hearing a PSG rendition of any particular standard is an overuse of pure dominant 7th t...

Six string Jazz specialist Jens Larsen gives a nice explanation of why Barry Harris' concept is not the same as the "Bebop" scale that shares the same notes as the C6/D dim note pattern and why it goes vastly deeper in building a great conceptual and practical framework for both melody and...

Yes Fred, there is so much potential for PSG to be recognized as a fantastic instrument for playing Jazz. To add to the list of players and albums would be probably my favorite: Doug Jernigan's "Jazz On Ten". His lines and soloing on the more Bebop tunes there are out of this world and bea...

Thanks for all of the additional comments. I'll locate and read the material you mentioned about Rick Schmidt, Bill. Thanks. Just to clarify a bit, it's not really "the scale" from Barry Harris that is the interesting item. It's more about having a uniform and consistent approach to using ...

Fair enough Brett, Fred and Donny. But... even though Buddy's and other's work and results were unbelievably innovative and worthwhile, that never put them into arena of the real Jazz pro's, as far as I'm aware. Sure, wonderful things can be done with the instrument as it exists today. But that does...

Actually, I like bar movement just as much as using pedals. They both take about the same time and effort to perform. The issue is, in my mind any way, that the C6 copedent just doesn't lend itself to consistent ways of playing melodic lines. Pretty much everywhere you start playing a phrase moving ...

Thanks Jon for that interesting information. I'm thinking in general that dropping the pitches rather than raising them would make a big difference in how well the guitar's structure and pulling mechanisms can deal with the stress. Justin, I see the merit to your observation. But I feel such a propo...

Right Ian. But in the last post I started to explain the potential benefits of not needing to move the bar. I figure that you need to add maybe 100 ms (a 10th of a second) to play any phrase that requires a bar movement, even to a nearby fret. Not to mention the additional muscle stamina and mental ...

Thanks for the opinions so far. I kind of prefer pedals to be on the stiff side rather than too loose, so maybe I might try adding one pull at a time and stopping at the point the situation deteriorates. Good point about the rod geometry. If I commit to trying this I suppose the first step (other th...

Greetings all, I would like to completely rebuild the copedent on one of my D10's so that the C6 neck functions in a way that enables Barry Harris' C6/Ddim approach to Jazz phrasing. In effect, this would be prioritizing playing diminished scales more effectively than the dominant 7th (Mixolydian). ...

Hi Jim, I have one of these and think it's superb for both PSG and 6 string guitar (both Fenders and Gibsons with humbuckers). https://www.telonics.com/products/proaudio/pre-1000.php There are 2 inputs with separate channels and controls. There is a bend knob for one channel where you can switch bet...

Hi Ian, It's great to see the 2 amps lined up like that with comparable settings. Yupp, I first interpreted your bass setting to be full on and that was surprising. :) I agree the amp can easily sound mushy with too much bass and little gain. My modification was to add a bypass capacitor and series ...

It seems to have a thicker, weightier sound than a Twin. It would be surprising then to back off the highs and punch the lows, but doing that brings out quite a beautiful tone and low mid articulation. I've actually modified mine to add a lot of gain in the 1Khz to 3Khz region. You can still get tha...

Won't you need a centre tapped +40 0 -40 transformer or +38 0 -38 not just 0 38 as that seems to be? or are the specifications deficient and there are actually two 38v outputs which would allow for the correct wiring. Yes, the specifications seem deficient at their website for some reason. When I o...

The main thing you need to do is to change the power transformer. The fuse(s) need to be changed also. If you are serious I will look over the schematic diagram again and come with more details. I've been meaning to do this for my Nashville 400 (decades ago) but have so many other things going on I ...

While this is true, it is really based on WHICH 15" driver. They are not all equal. Andrew is talking specifically about BASS designed speaker cabs with drivers designed for BASS response in a closed back cab. They are not the same as drivers designed for general purpose, such as guitars. One ...

Don't think for one minute that a 15" driver has less usable treble or high mids than a 12" or 10"! A 15" driver CAN deliver more usable and musical highs than either of the smaller drivers, but of course you need to realize that the deeper tones are going to be there much more p...

The Source Audio EQ2 could be considered too. Its default configuration is a graphic EQ but you can vary both the frequency and Q for each of the 20 channels of the device (if I remember right). That makes it a very powerful and outstanding parametric EQ. It's all programmable with at least 100 poss...

Hi Scott, Nicely done. Those pickups sound great. My favorite (apart from the gorgeous ZB) was the Z Series pickup which had quite a nice vintage tone and suited the Williams well. Could you raise the volume of the demo tracks by 6 to 8 dB and the PSG audio an additional 3 to 4 dB? I think that woul...