What tuner is the best to use for steel guitar?

[Kevin Klimek]

Hi everyone. I'm a newbie. Played steel back in the late 70's, early 80's, quit and sold my ShoBud (dumb move) and now am back with a new steel getting back into it. I hear a lot of talk about temper tuning and that's subject for another post. However, along that vein, what is the best tuner to get for tuning my steel? Can a person do a decent job of temper tuning with something that won't 'break the bank'? Thanks in advance for any replies, and it's great to be back picking steel.

[Roger Rettig]

I used to lug around rack-mounted tuners, but went over to the Boss TU-12H three or four years ago and haven't looked back!

They're really accurate, and sensitive enough to 'read' the lowest strings on C6th. The calibrations will allow any sort of variation in your preferred tuning (although I like tuning 'straight up' these days), and they're very affordable. I just bought one (for a spare) right here on the Forum for just $55. They're a nice handy size that'll take next-to no space in your steel-seat, and the 9-volt battery lasts a very long time.

[Geoff Cline]

Hi Kevin:

welcome to a most wonderful resource...the Forum is great. Using the "search" function with "tuner" or "sweetened" or "newman tuning" or [fill in any brand] will yield MANY threads with MANY opinions about tuners, tuning etc. I would suggest limiting your searches to "pedal steel" and "electronics" categories...but there are MANY posts about tuners and tunings in other categories as well.

Best thing about the Forum? No matter what your opinion is, some one will agree with you (could be many) AND some one will disagree with you (definitely will be many).

Good luck in your quest...more will be revealed.

[Allen Kentfield]

Kevin,


For E9, I use "Just", or "sweetened" tuning. "Straight up" on a tuner is "Tempered" tuning. The only note I tune "straight up" is A-440.

Intervals of a fourth are half a hertz flat of ET. A Korg is accurate to 1/2 hz, and I can tune every note. A Boss is accurate to 2 hz, so if I, m stuck with using one, I tune my Eb's at 2 hz flat and go from there.


Al Kentfield
Jonestown, Texas

[John Billings]

Roger,
I have the Grandad of your tuner. It's just a TU-12. Don't even know how long I've had it. Works great, and is very accurate. Actually, it is a TU-12H, but I have had it for many, many years. I like tuners that have needles.

[Barry Hyman]

The $25 (new) chromatic Korg bottom-of-the-line works perfectly for me. I tune straight up (equal tempered, where E is E and G# is G#, etc.) and truly believe that anyone who does otherwise is some sort of masochist. You only need an expensive tuner if you are going to follow some elaborate tuning ritual that will result in your pedal steel being very carefully tuned out of tune.

In short, if you use "just" tuning or tune to pure harmonics, your steel will sound good without pedals but will get progressively more out of tune as you engage pedals or knee levers. The whole genius of equal tempered tuning (ask JS Bach!) was that you will be ever so slightly "out of tune" in every key, and with any combination of pedals and knees, but not grossly out of tune in any key. If you tune to "just" tuning, your open E will sound good and your open A will sound decent and your open C# will sound truly horrible, and, if you try to compensate for that, then you are getting into what I call obsessive compulsive disorder or masochism. Just my opinion, but it is an opinion based on a music degree and 40 years as a professional performer, music teacher, and recording artist. "Just" tuning would work on a dobro, but it cannot work on a psg, as is obvious to anyone who knows acoustics, physics, or logic. Sorry to be so feisty, but learning the instrument is hard enough without the old-timers foisting bizarre and unnecessary and ineffectual tuning rituals onto people who are already struggling to play the instrument.

Oh boy, will this ever stir up a hornet's nest! Can't wait!

[Michael Douchette]

One with a gas tank, pull rope, and a chain...

[Roger Rettig]

Barry

I agree with you, but we're being asked about recommendations here. I think that, whatever 'ritual' (good word!!!) a player subjects himself to, the Boss is a very dependable unit. I did buy a cheaper Boss the year before last (a TU-80) but, despite constantly changing the battery, I found that the display was almost invisible (too dark) and, as often as not, hitting the string would fail to activate the tuner!!! Pretty frustrating, in my view; I can't bring myself to throw away something that I paid good money for ($30), but I may as well. Now I have two TU-12Hs, I think I'm covered.

Maybe I was just unlucky with the TU-80 - I'd imagine that the technology is similar.

As for tuning my steel, I was fed up with being out-of-tune with pianos and other instruments in pit orchestras - once I (at Dave Robbins urging) started just tuning it straight-up those issues have gone away. At first it took some getting used to, but not as long as I thought it would. I think I've re-taught my ear.

[Paul Sutherland]

The Peterson Strobo-Flip tuner works really well for me.

Barry: Can you name one top steel player that does not temper tune? Are you telling me that Buddy Emmons and all the other steel greats got it wrong?

[Barry Hyman]

Paul -- is there some misunderstanding here? I am talking about tempered tuning -- equal tempered tuning -- saying that it is good and that "just" tuning is bad and unnecessary on a psg.

Equal tempered tuning and tuning staight up mean the same thing. They mean that you use a tuner and do what it says -- tune the D to D and the F to F and the F# to F#, etc., with no additions or subtractions or compensations. If A is set at 440, then all the other notes, pedals, knees, and splits (if tuned to needle straight up at zero, with the green light lit and no red lights showing) will be in delightful tune. And for that, you do not need an expensive tuner or elaborate charts!

Buddy Emmons and the other great steel players learned to tune in the old days before electronic tuners were invented. (So did I, by the way, although that doesn't mean that I am comparing myself to the great pedal steel players in any way, shape, or fashion!) Since the steel does not have frets, tuning one was tricky in those days, especially tuning the pedals and knees. That's where all the confusion on this subject comes from. Now that electronic tuners are cheap, tuning psg no longer has to be tricky.

[Roger Rettig]

http://www.buddyemmons.com/_board/00000406.htm

440 for me, too. Flat is flat - sharp is sharp.

[Paul Sutherland]

I tried to respond to Barry earily and somehow my message got lost, and it was time for dinner.

Barry: My use of the work "temper" was imprecise. I am definitely an advocate of "just" tuning the pedal steel. I think it is a mistake to use "equal temper" when tuning a steel guitar, pedal or non-pedal. Do you tune every string straight up, and every pedal and lever change as well straight up?

Georg: When you tune using an A tuning fork, am I correct in assuming that you are tuning the Third and Sixth strings of the E9 neck with the pedals down (the A pitch), and then tuning everything else off of that A.

I will respond more later.

Paul

[Paul Sutherland]

Georg: Thank you for that clarification. You have a very different steel than I am working with. My Emmons has a lot of body drop that is audible and very visible on the stobe. But I think the Emmons is a great guitar, and I think that body drop is vastly overrated as a problem. The bar in the left hand solves the body drop problem.

Your tuning method is really not that dissimilar to mine. Rather than use the A pitch as the reference, I use the E reading on the strobe to tune the 4th and 8th strings as accurately as possible. I feel that I could easily convert to using the A pitch as the reference but just haven't seen a reason to switch. For reasons that should be made clear below, tuning to A 440 on the 3rd and 6th pedal pulls would put my steel slightly higher in overall pitch than my current method does, but that is really not an issue.

Because of the pronounced body drop of my guitar (that occurs when I press the A & B floor pedals), I have to tune the 3rd and 6th string pulls to a noticeably flat A. That's because the new A pitches need to blend or harmonize with the E strings, that haven't been changed by a pedal or lever, but have gone flat due to body drop. So my pedals down A's will be significantly flat to yours.

But that's OK. Once you place the bar on the strings, my steel should sound very much in tune to your standards because I use "just" tempered tuning. All of the chords under the bar are in tune to themselves, just as you are used to. As you already know, the rest is up to you to put the bar in the right spot.

That why I believe it really doesn't matter much whether you tune up to E (whatever the number) or A 440. But the strings have to be in tune under the bar. I think you and I probably agree on that.

[Barry Hyman]

For decades I tuned my pedal steels as you guys do, with a tuning fork. I had an E tuning fork, I would use it to tune the 4th and 8th strings (E9th), and then I would tune the 3rd, 5th, 6th, 10th, 11th, and 12th strings by ear so that the open E triad sounded good. This was, as best my ear could get it, just intonation -- I would tune the third and fifth in the chord to harmonics of the root, so as to minimize the beats. Then I would use the 5th and 10th strings as roots in the same way to tune the open B chord, adjusting the 1st, 2nd, and 7th strings until the entire B chord resonated nicely. The 9th string D was more of a problem, but I would tune it by ear so that it sounded good with the 7th string F# as part of a D triad.

But then came the hard part. How do you tune the pedals and knees by ear? I would do the best I could and then fudge the discrepancies with the bar, cursing the whole time that the steel would sound in tune one minute and out of tune the next.

I had studied equal tempered tuning and "just" tuning in college years before and I understood intellectually that the reason some of my chords sounded tuned and some did not was that my way of tuning by ear, using octaves and harmonics, was not equal tempered tuning, so that some chords, especially the open C# with the A pedal and the F lever, would never sound quite right. So I longed for equal tempered tuning, but didn't know how to get it, other than those rare occasions when I was near a freshly tuned piano.

When digital tuners first came out I ridiculed them, saying that I had a highly developed musician's ear and didn't need to spend money on such gadgets. Then gradually I started to think. The clincher was when I realized that with an electronic tuner, one could tune silently and no longer needed to subject the audience to the tuning process. (I used to play in noisy bars and would have to turn up pretty loud to tune.)

And, sure enough, the rest is history. The first time I tuned all the strings, pedals, and knees on my steel to the tuner was the first time it ever really sounded good.

Pedal steel guitar is an equal tempered instrument, like a fretted instrument or a keyboard, in that it is expected that it will sound equally good on all chords in all keys. Equal tempered tuning is the only way, by definition, that all the dozens of chords available in open position can all be equally in tune. (And if they are not in tune in open position, then no amound of fudging with the bar up the neck is likely to do any good unless you are just playing two strings at once. Three or more strings, and the bar can't save you -- the chords have to sound good open.)

Please note that I am only talking here about how equal tempered tuning is better than "just" tuning for psg. Cabinet drop is an entirely different problem with different causes and different solutions that should not be confused with the equal tempered vs "just" tuning debate.

[CrowBear Schmitt]

Kevin, If your budget permits, the Peterson Tuners are where it's at
The Strobo Flip is the most popular & the Strobo-Rack is the most expensive
http://www.petersontuners.com/index.cfm ... =37&sub=21

what's important imo to know is the value of cabinet drop yer steel has in order to tune it properly
check it out here :
http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=164485

Tuning by ear using harmonics is the best way to get to know how to tune & hear & that'll save you $$$ too

[Allen Kentfield]

I think if J.S. Bach had the pedal steel available, with the capability of perfect harmony in open tuning and modulation with the bar, the history of temperment might have been quite different. He did not use equal temperment. The "well-tempered" clavier was not tuned "straight-up". Thirds were tuned perfect ("sweetened") and the fifths were tempered. I've experimented applying that to steel. It works good for accordian music and harpsichord, but country harmony is pure. Tuning like that, I could not perfectly match pitches with the steel on country records.


Al Kentfield
Jonestown,Texas

[Paul Sutherland]

It appears I have continued to muddle the terminology by combining the word "just" with the word "temper" in my last post. As I now understand things, the correct terminology is "just intonation" versus "equal temperament".

My personal experience is that in the early 70s I was hired to play bass in a rock band that wanted to branch out into a little bit of country. I auditioned on my PSG. The plan was for the lead guitarist to play the bass when I played the steel. I tuned up for the audition by getting an E from the keyboard player, and then I tuned my steel by ear as I had always done. I now know that I tuned the steel using Just Intonation. My steel sounded good and I played well enough to impress them to hire me.

Shortly after joining the band the keyboard player strongly suggested that I should tune all the pitches of my steel to his Hammond (with the Leslie rotator turned off, of course). He was an excellent keyboard player and I was pretty intimidated by the situation so I did what he suggested. I tuned every string and every pedal change to his Hammond. I now know that I was tuning my steel using Equal Temperment tuning. IT WAS A TOTAL DISASTER. I could never get me steel to sound in tune and it sounded harsh. I could not get a pleasing tone out of the steel no matter how much I played with the tone controls on the amp.

I would repeatedly check my tuning to the organ but the steel never sounded right. I began to think that I just wasn't very good at hearing pitches and that I really wasn't cut out to be a steel player. The band used the steel less and less over time and after about six months I was out of the band. I went home with my tail between my legs.

Then something transformative happened. At home with no keyboard around to tune off of, I re-tuned my steel (both the open strings and all the pedal and lever changes) to what sounded good to my ear. Instantly my steel sounded in tune and the chords sounded sweet and pleasing to my ear. The tone of the steel seemed to have improved. Of course, I had retuned the steel using Just Intonation.

Over the years of playing I have learned that whenever the tone of my steel starts to not sound pleasing to me, the first move to make is not to fiddle with the tone controls on the amp. The first move should be to check the tuning of the steel, including the pedals and levers.

I don't have a music degree but I am totally confident that the best way to tune a PSG is with Just Intonation tuning.

So Barry, I repeat the challenge, with hopefully the correct terminology:

Name one top steel guitarist that does not use Just Intonation to tune his steel.

[Michael Haselman]

Kevin: from one Minnesotan to another. Get a Strobo Stomp and forget about it. It has 2 E9 sweetened tunings, I use the E90. Best $200 I've ever spent on a tuner. Then you can try the sweetened tunings and if you don't like them, tune them straight up 440. This topic never fails to stir up trouble. Speaking from experience from bringing it up before. Bottom line for me: Strobo stomp is a great tuner, and also tunings for dobro and fiddle, which I use, and equal, which I use for 6-string.

[John Billings]

[Earnest Bovine]

... temper tuning and that's subject for another post. However,... what is the best tuner to get for tuning my steel?

Kevin has suggested that which temperament you prefer is off topic, and which tuner you prefer is on topic.

I prefer a tuner like Boss TU-12H that shows the pitch of the string in cents compared to equal temperament. Less useful to me is a tuner like Peterson which simply tells you whether you are sharp or flat of a (non-equal-tempered) pitch that you have programmed.

[Barry Hyman]

Didn't mean to take this thread off topic. How you tune determines how much you need to spend for a tuner. I say a $25 tuner is all that is needed to make the pretty girls in the audience come up and offer you hugs and kisses. I think more expensive tuners and more elaborate ways of tuning are unnecessary for experts and intimidating for beginners. Perhaps I'll start another thread on this topic someday when I have time to kill. Georg, you are right that we should all just express our opinions good-naturedly and agree to disagree cheerfully and in a spirit of friendship. But I guess I get a bit riled when topics come up where I think the old timers are making things too difficult for the students, especially when the "experts" might be wrong as well as mystifying.

Allen, what you say doesn't make sense. "Thirds" are thirds in one key, fourths in another, seconds in another, etc. To return from Bach to E9th psg, the G# strings are the major third in the open E chord, fifths in the C# chord, sixths in the B chord, etc. The D# string is the major seventh over E, the major third in the B chord, and the fifth in the G# minor chord. That's why just intonation does not and can not make sense on pedal steel. It strikes me as a matter of simple logic rather than opinion.