some advise for guitarists who are learning steel

[Pete Burak]

What would you tell a guy with a strong sense of Music Theory about where to find all the jazz chords he's looking for within the B6th tuning on the S12U he has???

Well, if he only wanted to play jazz, and was not interested in country, I'd tell him about Maurice Anderson's Bb6 Universal tuning, which would probably be better for him.

That's exactly where it went for him.
...And He's gonna be a great Steeler!
...And you might be surprised what Reece has reccomended to replace P7.
This guy will be playing circles around all of us on the Jazz stuff any day now, if not already!

getting your ears and eyes to work together... ...will make the leap to fuller chords and pedal/lever combos easier...

Oh Man, So True.
To complete the Human feedback loop I would add... use your Eyes & Ears to ensure Bar Control/accuracy and Grip accuracy.
Intonation, Intonation, Intonation.
Guitar players are used to just tuning everything straight up in 30 seconds or so and calling it "in tune".
Pedals or not... It's gotta sound in tune.

[Christopher Woitach]

The Bb6 U12 is also perfectly good for playing any kind of music - it's just set up with the jazz world as default... I can't wait to get this!

Pete - thank you for all your help! You're a brother, no doubt.

[Brint Hannay]

...And you might be surprised what Reece has reccomended to replace P7.

What is it, then?

[Barry Hyman]

Yeah, Pete, I'm a guitar player who is used to tuning straight up in 30 seconds and calling it "in tune." That's right. And then I tune my pedal steel straight up in 30 seconds and call it "in tune."

Do you have a problem with that? I'm a professional musician. I get paid to play, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. I make a living playing music. What are you?

I'm SO sick of all this BS about tuning. Let me guess: You just can't stand to listen to guitars or bass players or banjos or mandolins or pianos or synthesizers or organs or accordions or dulcimers, not to mention horns or strings or vocalists who play with any of those instruments, because they all sound out of tune to you? Can't stand to listen to the radio or to CDs because they tune ET? Get real, man.

[Pete Burak]

Yeah, Pete, I'm a guitar player who is used to tuning straight up in 30 seconds and calling it "in tune." That's right. And then I tune my pedal steel straight up in 30 seconds and call it "in tune."

Do you have a problem with that? I'm a professional musician. I get paid to play, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. I make a living playing music. What are you?

I'm SO sick of all this BS about tuning. Let me guess: You just can't stand to listen to guitars or bass players or banjos or mandolins or pianos or synthesizers or organs or accordions or dulcimers, not to mention horns or strings or vocalists who play with any of those instruments, because they all sound out of tune to you? Can't stand to listen to the radio or to CDs because they tune ET? Get real, man.

I think there's been a misunderstaning...
I don't care how anyone tunes.
We all agree it's gotta sound in tune.

"The FeedBack loop between the eyes, ears, and hands, is what allows folks who tune differently to all sound in tune."

That's the applicable wisdom I intended to communicate.

My recently posted YouTube of Georgy Girl was tuned 100% straight up 440. (actually when I checked it afterwards my P7 had drifted sharp).
My 6th tuning is basically Straight Up.
I was straight up on the other 6th tune also.
When I do that Travis pickin' thing, I can tune pretty close to Straight Up... very few multi-note chords.

I said guitar players tune straight up and it takes about 30 seconds. I gigged on guitar last night and that was the case for me. I didn't tweak it.
As steel players we have to play in tune with guitar players, etc.
For classic pedal-mashin' E9th the needle might not line up with A440 across the map for some players.
This has been my expierience... It's hard for me to tune every note straight up on E9th and hear it as "in tune". Yet I still need to tune up and play with fixed keys and guitars tuned straight up, no tweaks.

Because I have a few steels here, I test fire tuning straight up, and a ton of other ideas I read about here on the forum.
I don't jump into these threads without first hand knowledge (uhh... most of the time!:))
Now that I'm into the video thing, I will try to post video clips to help complete the thought.

Here's my YouTube channel if you want to see what I'm into, Barry (fwiw, I listen to tons of the stuff you guessed I might not like).
I'm sure you and I would get along just fine in real life.
http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?feature=mhum

[Barry Hyman]

Sorry Pete, sorry everybody. It appears I did misunderstand Pete, quite completely, and quite virulently. I thought he was saying that 6-string guitars tuned straight up are not in tune, which seemed too goofy for me to leave it alone. But now I wish I had... Sorry, Pete...

[Brint Hannay]

Now that we've got that straightened out, I'm still curious about this:

you might be surprised what Reece has reccomended to replace P7.

[Pete Burak]

Brint,
When you combine the standed 6th-tuning Pedal-6, with what would be your standard B-pedal E9th raise (you can do this on Universals), those two changes used together allow you to play your "I ii iii IV V vi vii(dim) I" all on the same frets as guitar.
I put that change in place of P7 on my steel a few years back (and put P7 on LKR).
I was happily surprised to see this on a recent Bb6th setup recomendation.