The Steel Guitar Forum

My '99 Carter D10 stays in tune really well. My '17 Mullen SD12 Royal Precision, not as well. This is based on them being set up in my music room. The temperature here can vary a lot through the day. The Carter, I can just sit down and play without tuning. The Mullen needs tuning almost every time. But on a gig, they both hold tuning very well.

My Zum Hybrids are so stable that I have flown half way around the world on a number of occasions eg: New Zealand to Dallas TX ...and the guitar will still be in tune when I get it out of the case :-} a quick tweak and we are all go !!

My silly little Carter Starter has been extremely stable since I installed some home made hard stops from $5 worth of supplies from Home Depot.

It's been every bit as stable as my old Telecaster... is pretty much ready to go out of the case and has no discernible cabinet drop. I've thought about replacing the cheap tuners on the thing... then I remind myself that "right now" I don't need to.

Jack Stoner wrote:I've never had a steel that didn't hold the tuning after new strings settle in.

If someone is having problems staying in tune its usually a string problem. Either old worn out strings or crappy new strings.

I was gonna say something similar, I played over 500 different steels of many different brands, and I have to say that pretty much all stay in tune, some little better then others, but nothing drastic...

A pedal steel has to be solidly built in order to function at all, as the combined string tension on a D10 is in the order of 500lb before you start pulling anything. So stability is kind of built-in.

Concerning raises and lowers staying in tune with temperature change, those guitars that pull fingers to a stop that's close to the changer, ie push-pulls and Kline to name two, should be more stable than those that have travel stops farther away, ie, almost every all pull. I think anecdotally this bears out from what I hear from those owning the two I mentioned. Most if not all all pull guitars have the pedal stops at the top of the pedal rods. Our favorite pedal, A, in fact,has the longest pull rod and is subject to the most change in length. The Coefiecient of expansion for a steel rods dictates how it's length will change with temperature change. Likely some composite would do better than steel.

Both my Show Pro's stay in tune very well.