The Steel Guitar Forum

I don't believe we heard about "Cabinet Drop" until electronic tuners were invented. EH!

Roger

Tuning by ear and harmonics is great, but for live settings during sets you need an electronic tuner with presets, have your charts handy, or have your string frequencies memorized to save time and not be heard tuning. It sure is nice to be able to volume down and glance at my peterson in the middle of a song and be able to recover that sharp 6th string.
for recording I tune by the peterson then adjust it to my ear.

tuning is overrated!

ok..actually, i think the basic newmanish concept is workable, i think the specific numbers vary some guitar to guitar. i tune mine so the open strings (slightly sharp E's) and changes sound good then trust that. lots of times i won't check my tuning with a tuner. my steel holds tune quite well (26yr old zum) and i find the 'less' i continually tweak it, the better. normally i'll adjust open strings slightly by ear at set up if necessary, then forget about it. if something is obviously wrong, dig out the tuner at your first break! ha!

Tune the E s to 440, then put the tuner away and tune the rest so it is intune with itself,

Roger Shackelton wrote:I don't believe we heard about "Cabinet Drop" until electronic tuners were invented. EH!

Roger

Maybe you didn't. I was aware of the problem on my own guitar (a Sho-Bud 6139) long before I had an electronic tuner. It used to drive me crazy.

OK! OK! So Sho-Bud made a few bad guitars.

For me I used to tune the old Newman chart and I thought it was fine...then. Now I tune the E's to 440 pedals down and go from there to get the waves out. I tune the 5th string chimed at the 5th fret to match the 4th string chimed at the 7th fret pedals up. Get the waves out and tune the rest using the 8th string against the 10th string the same way I tuned the 4th and 5th strings. If you tune it 440 open no pedals down it's going to be flat with the cabinet drop and they all have it to some extent with maybe just a few that don't but even on all of my Emmons p/p's, they had a little. I get the waves out all the way across as much as I can and it sounds more in tune to me than it ever did. This business of tuning everything straight up to me is just lazy and there's waves all over the place no matter what kind of guitar it is. I call my way of tuning A 440 as I'm tuning it pedals down and the A's are tuned to 440 to match the E's and it works great. It's the most in tune I've ever heard my guitars. The guitar needs to be in tune with itself! Don't pay any attention to the meter when you tune your 1st string to match your 5th string. (1st string chimed at 12th fret and 5th string chimed at 7th fret) It's going to read sharp on the tuner but it's in tune with everything else and will sound great. The B's will read a little sharp too but they'll be in tune with the rest of the guitar. The C#'s will be about 436.5 thereabouts. The G#'s will be about the same. It sounds great with pedals up or down on any guitar. Don't let that tuner tell you it's in tune. Let your ear tell you and train it do so. Watch Lloyd Green tune his guitar. He still uses a pitch fork and tunes everything to his E's and it's in tune and always has been. He trained his ears not his eyes. If you want to write all of your settings down and use that, then fine but still check it with your ears and get the waves out. If it's wavy, it's out.

Roger Shackelton wrote:OK! OK! So Sho-Bud made a few bad guitars.

I didn't say that it was a bad guitar! I'm just saying that cabinet drop was quite apparent to me before I had an electronic tuner. It's a real phenomenon, and it's not below the threshold of what we can hear.

The amount of cabinet drop on my Sho-Bud was not excessive. The guitar could be tuned quite nicely by ear or with an electronic tuner. It just took me a while to understand the forces involved when I was a beginner.

Frank, The way you tune is exacty the same way i do. and i learned it from Emmons tuning tape.

Frank,
Finally something that everybody can understand. I printed it off and will try it. Up to now I have been using Jeff's "new" tuning chart.

So...according to this, the only reason we tune this way (tempered) is because of the pedals causing the cabinet drop?
Maybe I have been wrong all these years, but I was also under the impression that we temper tuned because of the fact that we have a non-adjustable bridge so we can't set up the intonation like we do on a 6-string.

By the way, how do you tune your pedals?

This is how Gary Rittenberry Showed me,
1 438
2 438
3 436.5
4 440.5
5 441
6 436.5
7 438.5
8 440.5
9 441
10 436.5
A&B down Tune Es to 440

Learn to tweek it by ear.

How do you tune the D, G#'s, and D#?

Bent Romnes wrote:So...according to this, the only reason we tune this way (tempered) is because of the pedals causing the cabinet drop?

Maybe I have been wrong all these years, but I was also under the impression that we temper tuned because of the fact that we have a non-adjustable bridge so we can't set up the intonation like we do on a 6-string.

Most of us tune to just intonation (or something close to it) because it sounds better than equal temperament to our ears. In ET (the tuning of electronic keyboards), major third intervals are wider than the natural overtone. This produces a slight "beating" effect in the harmony.

Steel players like to sound very smooth. For most of us, that wide major third of Equal Temperament sounds a bit out of tune. We tune more to the harmonies that good singers sing, or that a good string quartet plays.

I think the secret is to get the right tuner. I use a lap top tuner which always assures me I'm in tune.

i was a student at Jeff's school in Nashville on several occasions. He explained the tempered tuning that he used as a way of sounding more in tune with the band. He said there was some guy in Texas, music ;professor maybe?, that convinced him to change his tuning chart a bit. I think that was where the later chart came into play. I tried his tuning when I came home and played with my band. I didn't say anything, but the guitar player noticed and commented that I sounded in tune with the band. So the difference was enough to make the guitar player notice without being told. I am still using Jeff's chart and have gotten so used to it over the years that nothing else sounds in tune to me. I guess different people's ears just hear different. I think sounding in tune playing by yourself and playing in tune with a band, may not be quite the same thing. If you are happy and the band is happy with whaterver tuning you are using, that is all that matters at the end of the day.

I use a Boss TU-12 or a TU-15. Nothing wrong with any of the tuners out there, it's just my preference and for this reason. I don't want the big thing hanging off the leg of my guitar ruining it's appearance. I was at the NTSGA club jam the other night and somebody there had one of these tuners on their guitar and for me I just don't want or need anything that big to tune my guitar. I velcro my tuner to the back apron of the guitar and it's unnoticeable! Everybody goes out and buys the latest thing that makes it "easy" to tune but they forget about learning to tune with their ears. It's all about ear training! If I had a programable tuner and were to put in my presets, it would look a little like this but remember to check it with your ears! If it's wavy, it's out of tune!

Open strings

F# 442
D# 436-7
G# 436-7
E 440 pedals down
B 442
G# 436-7
F# 439
E 440 pedals down
D 439
B 442

Pedals engaged

1 G# 436-7
2 E 439 D 439 C# 436
I tune this E just a tad flat for just a little wave when using it with the 4th string
3 A 440
4 F# 441 F 441 D# 436-7
5 C# both are 436-7 Bb 440 A 440
6 A 440 F# 439 F# 440
7 G 436-7
8 D# 436-7 F 441
9 C# 436-7
10 C# 436-7 Bb 440

I think that's all of them. It's just a pretty normal E9 Emmons set-up with the PF change either on my 4th pedal or on the Carter I split it with my 4th pedal lowering the 5 a whole tone and the RKL lowering the 6th a whole tone. I raise the 1st (whole tone) and 2nd strings (half tone) at the same time on RKL too

If I were to use only a tuner and never train my ear, this would be pretty close but to me on different days depending on whatever it is maybe the humidity, my sinuses or whatever else comes into play, I still listen for the waves and try to get it to sound as smooth as I can just like B0b said. He had a great chart once that had all these ways to tune with chimes. I don't remember all of it but I took what sounded good to me and just trained my ear to hear it sound the best I thought it could. I've played this thing for over 25 years now and this is so far the best I've ever heard any of my guitars sound in tune. If you don't have your ears trained then just use this as a reference if you want. It's not perfect but only a reference point to start from. I think your guitar will change according to it's personal characteristics, cabinet drop and so on. I think learning the whole Emmons chiming method would be a great way to get it right. I've heard he tunes everything straight up and I've heard he tunes it according to chimes. I've only seen him tune it to chimes and it always sounded in tune. I can't hold with that straight up tuning! Keep in mind, we aren't Buddy Emmons and I think he'd sound good if he played a washboard.

Frank, I agree with everything you say. Thats exactly how I tune a guitar with some drop in it. I use the same tuners velcroed the same way. I really agree about the ear training thing, thanks to Paul Franklin.

I also use the TU 12 Boss. The best little tuner I've ever had. I use the tuner to get close but then I turn my ears on to do the tweeking.
I think we depend to much on tuner's.
I think we all need to remember that no two guitars will tune the same.

So true Bill. I had a 70 Sho-Bud that had next to no cabinet drop at all but would slip some throughout the night. The Emmons will pretty much stay there all night when the strings are new and broke in and will hold it's tuning for several weeks depending on how much I'm playing. Depending on the string wear, they'll move just a little and then it's time to tweak it with your ears turned on. To me the small tuner is ideal for everything I need to do and doesn't cost a lot either. You can't even put those big tuners in your seat so it's just something else to carry. I carry everything I need in my seat and back of the amp. I see no need to have a tuner to program because I use my ears and like Kevin I can thank Paul Franklin for some very sound advice.

what do you guys do live? when you cant tune with your ears? thats the only reason I like the presets. I can fix something during a song. Curious what you more experienced guys do. I know with a 6 string I can do quick adjustments on the fly since I have been playing them so long, but steel takes me to long to tune live.

Well, for some guys, you need to use a baseball bat to teach em how to tune their guitar, you can show em a 100 times & they still just don't get it. What can we do for them?? Who knows. Please Jeff, send us a sign from above, maybe even on the wings of a dove, or maybe a shobud!

Ernie

Simple fact, all guitars are different , so how can you use any tuning charts, tune your E's to 440 with both pedals down and then use harmonics to tune the rest , how can it be wrong?

I tune with my pedals down to 441 and I tune my E's to that, the rest I tune by ear with chimes. I have played many recording sessions over the years and I do play in tune and like a couple of guys said before , it doesn't matter if you're open strings are perfectly in tune, if you don't play in tune, you aren't in tune.
I tried tuning straight up to a tuner one time and never tuned that way again, it was horribly out of tune and I personally believe that if you tune straight up, you will not be in tune, you have to temper your strings if you play with a piano for sure, sorry Eric West, I'm sure you will respond and that's ok ole buddy. BTW, I will be coming down to your part of the world next winter and would like to meet you and do a little picking, not trying to be smart and picking on you, I truly do want to meet you, I will be haning with old Doug Jones a very good friend of mine and your's probably. I know how you feel about tuning straight up and I simply believe everyone has they're own opinion on this, including myself.
Best Regards
Gene Brown

Why can't you tune it in a live situation? Unless the place is incredibly loud like a thunderstorm or something I don't know why you couldn't tune it live. That's 95% of how I tune a steel guitar. I might tune it using the numbers above but before I play it with the band I check it all to see how it sounds. Chimes should cut through about anything else unless you've got a drummer beating the hell out of the drums or a noisy guitar player. I usually set up and have it tuned before anybody else gets there to create a nuisance!