The Steel Guitar Forum

I think the point for Sacred Steelers is to strum when the Es are in unison. The pedal or lever that changes one of the Es is used for playing melodies, not strumming. On guitar or keyboards when a flat 7th, major 7th, or 9th chord is used, it is an octave from the E, or the E is simply not played. ...

From what I've read and heard, 15s started with the Fender Pro. Vibrasonics upped the volume (meaning more sustain with the volume pedal), but there weren't that many, and they were only made a few years. Twins were more common, and people would put 15s in them for that full organ-like tone. Standel...

My experience with instrument speakers/cabs is that it’s all about the frequency curve projection of the speakers, judged by our ears. With enough power and proper closed cab, 10s (or even 8s) can reproduce the fundamentals of the lowest strings on C6 or Uni. Likewise, 15s can get the fundamentals...

When I switched from S10 E9 to S12 Extended E9, my thumb had trouble with the extra strings down there. I restrung it as an E9/B6 Universal, and that all cleared up. Without the D string, they are all chord strings at the bottom, and you can't hit a wrong one. Plus, you get all the new 6th neck stuf...

If Damir or someone else has an S12 Universal you can try, I'd recommend doing so before you decide. I started on S10 E9, then got an S12 Extended E9. My thumb had trouble adjusting to the extra low strings. Then I set it up as a uni, and without the D string (which I rarely used) my thumb was so ha...

Yeah, all the modern Twins since the silver-face era seem to be poor imitations of the lower powered black-face twins. They don't have the power and clean tone one needs for pedal steel with a volume pedal. The best Twins for steel are the ultra-linear 135 watt late silver-face master volume Twins t...

Hi DVA, first make sure you have the boost foot switch working right. It should give you a noticeable boost or cut, depending on whether it's on or off. If it is not plugged in, the default is that it's off. So be sure the plug is seating right and giving you the boost. Next fiddle with both sets of...

Actually, there may be some carry over from the non-pedal D8s that immediately preceeded D8 and D10 pedal steels. The most common D8 seems to have been A6 on the front neck and C6 on the back neck. With the pedals down, E9 is A6, and many early pedalers related to it that way. If you have an A6/C6 D...

Read about them here: http://www.thevintagesound.com/ffg/ These are the mother of all pedalsteel clean tube amps. They were made at the end of the ultra-linear silver-face era, and designed by Rivera with some bells and whistles and about half-again as much power as the regular Twin of that era - as...

When instruments are tuned differently, whoever plays the loudest sounds in tune, and the background instrument sounds out of tune. Pianos can play out of tune with ET okay, because people are used to that sound, and pianos don't sustain the beats like pedal steel. But when a pedal steel takes the f...

I've tried tons of guitar distortion/fuzz/etc. boxes and most don't work well for pedal steel. It's expensive but the Seymour Duncan Twin Tube, or the Blues version of the same box, do it for me for rock and blues. It really functions as a tube preamp that allows you to dial in the exact amount of b...

I've tried tons of guitar distortion/fuzz/etc. boxes and most don't work well for pedal steel. It's expensive but the Seymour Duncan Twin Tube, or the Blues version of the same box, do it for me for rock and blues. It really functions as a tube preamp that allows you to dial in the exact amount of b...

Dang, I haven't been on the Forum for many months, had to reactivate. With trepidation the first place I went was this Gone Home section, just 'cause I know so many great steelers are at the age where you can't take anything for granted. And here I find my old debating buddy, Eric, has been reclaime...

The beauty of a steel guitar, with or without pedals, is that with the bar we can move sweet JI chords to any fret. The people who invented the pedals and levers used in the common E9 and C6 pedal steel tunings wisely chose pedals and levers that kept the sweet JI sound. That was no accident. The pe...

I read somewhere that the rating on the back of the chassis was the recommended minimum speaker power handling capability, not the actual power output of the amp. They wanted a little margin for safety, so they made these ratings a little higher than the actual output of the amps. They all sound gre...

If you are going to switch from a plain to a wound string, you need to increase the gauge a little. The core of a wound string is a much smaller gauge than the plain string. If you leave the overall gauge the same, the wound string will have too little tension, resulting in less volume and excess tr...

I had one of these in a head cab, and played it with 12s or a 15. It's basically a silver-face Pro Reverb ultralinearized and with the pull-boosts on all the tone knobs. That means it is a very clean sounding 75 watt tube amp. It is one of the last hand-wired Fender tube amps, from the Rivera era. T...

Why can't Bands have that kind of pride in themselves anymore. Don Because, it's not really about pride, Don. It's just about styles that come and go. In those photos they were wearing the styles of the times. They still are. But I agree with you those are great color photos of great people in a gr...

I was thinking the poll result would be more one-sided, but it seems it's pretty split between ET and JI (or by ear). Hunh? The arithmetic says only 17% tune straight up ET. 72% use JI (by approximate chart or ear) or something in between. And 11% use something unknown ("other"), but that...

I've been playing a 12-string E9/B6 universal in a blues band for several years. Any tuning will work for lead work, but it really helps to have the low strings for rhythm. I've also played slide guitar and lap steel. The thing that is so great with pedal steel is that you can play in any key. Most ...

Not suprisingly, D10 is the biggest group. But it is nevertheless a minority. If you break it down to the basic choice of single neck versus double neck, it is 53% single neck versus 43% double neck. Don't know if that will hold up, but 172 is getting to be a pretty good sized sample. I'm thinking t...

Hi guys. After a period of forced temporary retirement (that's what you call unemployment when you are over 60), during which I was an active poster, I am now 6 months into a new job in Baltimore. I've been moving my junk from Philly to Balto, and also fixing up my Philly house to sell. That's what ...

Well, I move to a new city, take a new day job, and drop off the Forum for a couple of months (seems like years), and come back to the same tuning questions and mixtures of truth and...um...something else, from some of the same players, and some new ones. A lot of people have written a lot about thi...

I tried a Truetone on my '80s 12-string Emmons p/p. It was a waste of money. The original Emmons single-coil is as good as it gets.

After learning on S10 E9, my first 12-string was Extended E9, 3&4. I had a lot of trouble with the more complicated grips on the low strings. As an experiment I restrung it with a universal set of strings, and changed the pedals and levers over to an abbreviated universal setup (including having...