The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm with Henry on this one. I always have a keyboard in my band, and I don't have a clue whether I tune 440, 450, or 490. The important thing is that when I strum an open E chord is that it sounds perfectly in tune with an E chord on the piano. You should never tune single notes to the piano because the piano is not "just" tuned. But if you match a CHORD with the corresponding CHORD, you will be golden. So when my open E chord is matching the piano E chord as perfectly as possible, then I program the tuning into my Peterson and I am set for life. The tuner never loses its setting. If you don't have a keyboard in the band, in my humble opinion, you should still go to a music store, find a high quality keyboard, and set your tuner to that just in case you have a guest sit in on keys at some point. Sure works for me, YMMV. [[ Here is an edit to what I just said. Not only do you want the E chord to match the keyboard, you also want the A chord (with A & B pedals down) to match the keys. So if the A chord is slightly flat to the piano then you will have to split the difference and make the E chord slightly sharp. But once you find the best balance between the two, you are set.]]

Pete Burak wrote:
I think the thing about 440 or 442.5 or whatever has alot to do with Parallax Error, which probably has to do with how tall you are....

ok, i'll bite.
i'm 5'5".
what reference pitch should i be tuning to?

More vibrato

Dan...Amen

440, 442, etc. is totally irrelevant when playing in a band. Your either in tune with the other instruments or your not!
The key board/piano is not going to tune to your Peterson or whatever.

b0b,

Who makes that tuner you posted. I use a Snark and all my regular guitars and the old Standard Boss TU-12. Would be nice to have a clip on tuner that read cents.

Georg Sørtun wrote: All talk about "Parallax Error" and other visual errors that we can come up with, should be totally ignored then. Play by ear.

well, yeah.
i don't see any possible way that your *height* would influence your tuning. or how tuning to a different reference pitch would help parallax, really. that would be a fretboard adjustment, not a tuning adjustment, as far as i can tell. i don't know, the parallax thing has never given me a rash in the slightest.

if you were customizing an steel for height, it seems like you'd be changing the scale length, not the tuning. right, arm length?

that's why i asked Pete, because it doesn't make any sense to me. i'm 5'5", my buddy is 6'2". what should we each be tuning to?

j

What you tune to is irrelevant to the center frequency.
Do you want to stand out or fit inin?

Len Amaral wrote:b0b,

Who makes that tuner you posted. I use a Snark and all my regular guitars and the old Standard Boss TU-12. Would be nice to have a clip on tuner that read cents.

That's a Snark HZ-1. It doesn't show cents - it shows actual Hz (waves per second). I don't know if it will work on pedal steel. I've ordered one, so we'll soon find out.

dude!! try tuning to 420, man...
it's far out. sweeet!

I used to tune straight up 440 on all my strings. Until, I met Jim Lindsey. Jim taught me to tune the 2nd,3rd, and 6th strings 12 cents flat to 428. Then the rest of the strings are tuned straight up. This method has helped achieve the proper intonation, that I needed to play.

I use 440 because I want my open "E to sound good with the guitar players "E" chord. Never saw much common sense in tuning 440 "pedals down" because I use the no-pedal open position far more that I use the "pedals down" open position.

Donny Hinson wrote:I use 440 because I want my open "E to sound good with the guitar players "E" chord. Never saw much common sense in tuning 440 "pedals down" because I use the no-pedal open position far more that I use the "pedals down" open position.

How does your G# sound against the guitar player's "E" chord?

it turns out he was tuned almost +20 cents sharp!

We assume that when we see a guitarist staring at a tuner, he knows what he's doing; but my science teachers always told me not to assume anything...

b0b wrote: How does your G# sound against the guitar player's "E" chord?

Better than it would if I tuned ET.

Jamie Mitchell wrote:
if you were customizing an (a) steel for height, it seems like you'd be changing the scale length, not the tuning. right, arm length?

huh??

gents I must say how is a newbie like me ever going to figure out how to tune when all you experienced just tune to whatever suits our fancy soi guess fornow I need tostick to the frequency values sent upby mr newman until I can get good enough man you guys are really confusing littleold mr dennis n brown Pocahontas Arkansas a true son of the south

Dennis, this is a neverending discussion, but a basic tuner will get you close enough to get started

thanks lane for now I am going to keepwhat ihave the carter and the marlen didn't get to go tojohnny coxs money trouble or more specifically woman trouble oh wellthat is the story of a males life trying tokeepa woman satisfied dmmif they cant go thru that green stuff sound famililar guys dennis

Another suggestion Dennis is use your ears. That's not sarcastic. If it sounds right, then it is right. I have tried some tunings that however carefully you follow the numbers, they sound bad. So trust your musical sense.

I was fortunate that my first band had a harmonica player (a fixed, non-tune-able instrument). At the time I was loosely following the Newman Chart (with the E's at "0" cents relative to the reference pitch), but tweaking it here and there to my ear's preference. When my open chords didn't sound right with the band, I played with the reference and settled on "442.7" being ideal for my GFI D-10. Haven't had to change it since.

I would guess that other brands would have varying "cabinet drop" effects that would make that reference different. As Ian said, always let your ear be the judge.

Harmonicas are tuned to just intonation with the root note matching the A=442 Hz standard - the equivalent of our "tune E to 442". See http://harp.andrewzajac.ca/Tune for more information.

guess what when I got my carter starter I also got a dvd with it and asusual I put it up and forgot where welli found it yesterday and as usual I didn't have a dvd so another tripto Walmart gotthe dvd going and watched the video they did a really bang up job I amnow confident about tackling any number of issues by the way they said the same thing to tune by ear so that is what I amgoing to do their section on the mechanics of tuning was exceptionally good a word of thanks to the carter people on a super good job dennis yep guys I am stil replacing stuff the ex wife took oh well that's life