The Steel Guitar Forum

Here is a question for some of you very experienced and knowledgable players that have played many different brands/types of guitars over the years. I've got a Carter D-10.

I am noticing that whenever I have any of my pedals down, I see a drop in pitch, as much as about -5 cents, in the adjacent, non-pedal controled, strings.

For instance, when I pluck the 6th string and then depress the "C Pedal", the 6th string goes flat about -5 cents.

In fact, all the strings seem to flatten slightly, whenever a pedal is depressed.

Is this a normal situation with most PSGs? Do most guitars act this way?

Is this typical, and something most players accept and just work around?

Any wisdom about these observations would be very much appreciated!

With thanks,
Susan

Susan -

You're about to be inundated with dozens of home-grown theories for the malady that you describe. Most of them will be unfounded. In addition, you'll be peppered with a bunch of questions regarding your instrument. I'll attempt to ask the most important of all questions: - Can you actually HEAR a 5-cent drop in a string? General consensus is that most people cannot. Given that, I propose that you adopt the motto of one Alfred E. Newman - "What, me worry?".

Play on, dear heart.

Richard

All steel guitars have this problem; some are worse than others.
The thickest plain strings and thickest wound strings are most sensitive to this kind of detuning.

Susan Conway wrote:..when I pluck the 6th string and then depress the "C Pedal", the 6th string goes flat about -5 cents.
...
Is this typical...?

If that's a plain string, 5 cents is better than most guitars. If it's a wound string, that's worse than most.

Richard Damron wrote: Can you actually HEAR a 5-cent drop in a string? General consensus is that most people cannot.

A note 5 cents out of tune in a monophonic melody may be inoffensive or unnoticed to most listeners.
OTOH, in a chord, a 5 cents change in one note would sound very different to most of us, and not always tolerable.

My MSA Legend E9th 4th string drops 6.5 cents when pedal A and B are pressed simultaneously.

Of course the 4th string can be made to drop a lot more if you press harder than necessary when engaging the A and B pedals. In some situations this detuning helps and in some situations it hurts.

You can live with it by raising your open tuning a bit, slanting and pressuring the bar as needed, playing above and below the frets etc. You will have to do many of these things anyway to play in tune with a band or even a rhythm track. You could also use compensators or get and Emmons with a counter-force mechanism.

I saw one steeler add a 3rd leg support below his 2nd pedal to alleviate this a bit. The 7th string can be even more problematic depending on how good your ear is and how much you let this "problem" dominate your thinking.


Greg

Susan, that is normal. Its often referred to as cabinet drop. I agree with Ernest in that with monophonic (single note) playing it isnt much of a problem, but can be noticeable with some chords with certain lever combinations. Some folks add a compensator, which is an extra rod that pulls the offending string (usually a plain unwound 6 or 7) back up to pitch. Its a microtonal adjustment and many players just live with it as is.

Clete

Part of playing a pedal steel is learning to find a "tonal center", or using your hands and ears to make things sound better, both on their own, and in relation to others. While 5 cents of drop or raise is noticeable when tuning, it can be made tolerable while playing by adjusting your tuning or shifting the bar. For instance, you hit A&B and the 4th goes flat 5 cents? One solution is to tune the 4th a couple cents sharp, or "splitting the difference" (this is also called "offsetting", and there are myriad different offsets that players use). However, should this happen while you're playing, and as long as you're not playing open, a skilled player with a good ear will automatically shift the bar up a couple of cents if he hears the 4th go considerably flat, and probably add a little more vibrato, too! Now, the 4th may be considered only 2 or 3 cents flat, and 1&3 are a couple cents sharp. Of course, as a triad it's still 5 cents "out" with itself, but when compared with the tonal center of other instruments or the singers, it's now a triad in which any note is only 2 or 3 cents off, and that's within the range of tolerability (where it would probably not be noticed by most listeners).

Make no mistake this is absolutely the hardest aspect of playing pedal steel - making it sound like it's in tune when it actually isn't. It can probably be called the skill that separates the "masters" from the "average players"... because it is both theoretically and practically impossible to have everything in perfect tune.