The Steel Guitar Forum

The problems you describe sound very familiar to what I was running into when I got this guitar a year ago. Lowering the pickup did help a lot but in combination with a way more powerful amp did the trick for me. I still run into a little mud on my Milkman Pedal Steel mini at stage volumes. I don't play that loud at all and have my VP at around 60-70% all the time. With the mini I get a lot more gain at stage volume.

Thanks all for the replies and advice. I was able to use a Dremel grinder to take off the baseplate edges such that the pickup could lower to the changer arms, got about 4mm additional space from the strings and this solved the problem!

The Amp sounds great, no breakup unless I want it.

I appreciate the help.

Good stuff!

Aren, the weird backwards background sounds you mentioned sound exactly like what I have been experiencing when using an overdrive pedal. I was messing around with a couple of overdrive pedals playing E9 on a D10 Zum with E66's on it. When I set them to have a fair amount of distortion on either of them, I would notice that when I played 2 frets down from open position, playing string 4 and string 5 using the A pedal that if I played them both together and hit the A pedal I would hear weird overtones. I noticed if I cut the tone knob on the pedal that it was better. I am wondering if any of you have experienced this before while using either an overdrive pedal or a distortion pedal. The overtones are low and while the pedal is raising the pitch of the string a whole step, the overtones are descending. I've heard this before with a P/P Emmons with stock p/u's too. It doesn't happen when I play the string alone, only when I play it with two strings simultaneously.

Bob Watson wrote:Aren, the weird backwards background sounds you mentioned sound exactly like what I have been experiencing when using an overdrive pedal. I was messing around with a couple of overdrive pedals playing E9 on a D10 Zum with E66's on it. When I set them to have a fair amount of distortion on either of them, I would notice that when I played 2 frets down from open position, playing string 4 and string 5 using the A pedal that if I played them both together and hit the A pedal I would hear weird overtones. I noticed if I cut the tone knob on the pedal that it was better. I am wondering if any of you have experienced this before while using either an overdrive pedal or a distortion pedal. The overtones are low and while the pedal is raising the pitch of the string a whole step, the overtones are descending. I've heard this before with a P/P Emmons with stock p/u's too. It doesn't happen when I play the string alone, only when I play it with two strings simultaneously.

From what I can gather from other posts, it is "intermodulation distortion", and things like distortion or overdriven tubes exacerbate it. I bought a Boss Waza DM-2W analog delay, and these background notes were so loud they drove me nuts and I went to a DD-3 and the problem disappeared.

I've also been getting them in my new Milkman, and trying to get rid of them. A lot of folks describe them as a tone color that can be positive. But when they are very loud, to me it sounds bad. Seems at lower frets they are not audible, but above 12th fret they bug me to distraction.

They are less present when I dial back lows or back way off the volume pedal (which I don't want to have to do) and dial back the gain (which I don't always want to do) . I could have sworn they were not there through my solid state rig, but today switched back...and they are certainly there, just much quieter.

My questions to the much more experienced and knowledgable:

-What can be done to reduce this in the signal?
-What in the chain of events between pick and ear causes them to be amplified?
-Are they inherently more present in tube rigs vs solid state?
-Does speaker choice affect them?

I'm guessing they are always there, but when they get too loud, they drive me nuts.

Thanks in advance all.

Aren, thanks for the response. I have a Boss Waza DM-2W and I've never heard these overtones while using it, but I only use it with a clean amp tone and I don't have the mix up that loud. Hopefully, someone will respond who knows more about this and knows a way to make it go away, or at least minimize it.

Update:

I switched the tube to a Groove Tubes 12AY7, it gave me even more clean room. With a six string though it doesn't break up much unless you use the FET boost.

Probably not necessary after lowering the pickup mostly fixed it, but it does give me more wiggle room with my volume pedal, with an overall loss of volume.

Hi all. I’m running into this same problem with my Williams 700 d-10 with Bill Lawrence 705’s. I went from an Amp 50 to an Amp 100 and the problem still persists. Guitar works fine through both so I’m positive it’s the pickup. Probably going to switch to different pickups at some point, but in the mean time I want to try to lower my pickup height. Can somebody explain to me how to do this? I assume it’s quite straightforward but I don’t want to go messing around with things without being sure of what I’m doing.

Thanks,
Luke