The Steel Guitar Forum

I'm asuming that the Fender Treble phenomenon is as much due to the ash used on most Fender Steel Guitars as the pick ups,am I correct ? And if so,would using a warmer tone wood like Mahogany or Korina make for a warmer sounding guitar?using my Duncan Stringmaster pick ups ,also more of a guitar shaped body rather than a plank shape like the Deluxe 8 ? I hope I made sense.

I'll let you know in a week or so, I'm finishing up my Deluxe 8 clone with mahogany body and duncan antiquity Stringmaster pups. The body shape is more contoured as well. Though if you want my honest opinion, I don't think wood species makes much of a difference, and any difference it does make gets pretty much washed away with amp settings, tone controls, etc., etc. I will say that the mahogany is very enjoyable to work with, and is quite nice looking.

Well...forumite Jody Carver, who worked for Leo in the 50s claimed Leo was tone deaf and only heard high frequencies well. He had the final say in design. Of course, this sound became "the" sound.
I think it's the pickups mainly.

I always thought the thin Fender tone was due to the pickups and how they are wired. I read somewhere that Leo was looking for a thin cutting tone that would cut through other instruments on a bandstand.

The blend control on the Stringmaster and Deluxe 8 goes from thin to thinner! To my ears it's an almost 'out of phase' sound.

I don't know the technical details so I'll take the liberty of quoting John Allison from an earlier thread:

John Allison wrote:
The original Stringmaster blend circuit is indeed wired as a variable coil tap. It isn't a true blend circuit in that there's no position where you can get the neck pickup alone or more neck than bridge. The 2 pickups act in a way similar to the 2 coils in a humbucker - if one is reverse wound/reverse polarity. The Stringmaster blend circuit essentially turns the neck pickup off gradually. It's reductive in nature, though in practice, the default is to use the bridge pickup primarily and "add in" some neck pickup to make the tone fuller.

Stringmaster pickups are wired in series and Strat and Tele pickups are wired in parallel through the 3 or 5 way switch. It's really a different effect. I've wired the pickups on a couple of my steels with a 5 way rotary switch to achieve different series/parallel combinations and the sound was pretty nice. In the end, though, the Tele style switching wasn't really very satisfying and I've settled on a series-wired true blend circuit that allows a full range of tone possibilities from all neck to all bridge with all the subtle variations in between.

i am wanting to add two Duncan Antiquity pickups to my lap steel but the 50s Antiquity is only made for single pickup, alto they have the Duo-Sonic and i am told it is the same as the 6 string pickups used in the Fender Deluxe, and if wired as a Deluxe 6, is as close as i can get, anyone ever use the Duo-Sonic pickups in a lap

Doug Beaumier wrote: The blend control on the Stringmaster and Deluxe 8 goes from thin to thinner! To my ears it's an almost 'out of phase' sound.

I could never put my finger on what exactly makes the Stringmaster sound so unsettling to me... you nailed it!!

Even with the vast tonal palette afforded by the blend control, for the life of me I can't seem to dial in a pleasing sound.

I know what you mean, Jeff. It's not a mellow tone, that's for sure. It's bright and lively regardless of how the blend control is set IMO. I like it for some styles of music, and I prefer the Gibson or Epiphone tones for other styles.

I wonder how a Stringmaster would sound with only the front pick up on? I have considered rewiring mine so I could have that option. Should be a bit more mellow.
On the topic of Stringmasters, I have been listening to Noel Boggs' "Magic Steel Guitar" lately, and his tones are beautiful. I am guessing it is a Stringmaster. Anybody know?...Jerry

I think he played the earlier Fender with the trapezoid pickup for most of his career.

You have several choices when setting up a Stringmaster AFA tone is concerned... you can blend out the front pickup but not the back one, but if you want to hear the front pickup alone you can lower the back pickup... the humbucking will still be there, as well as the series inductance, but the signal from the back pickup will be much lower.

This will probably increase treble somewhat, since part of the humbucking sound is the cancellation of the difference between the two nodes sampled by the pickups. This is a necessary consequence of the pickups being in two different places... there are some harmonics that are out-of-phase being cancelled. You can hear this when you fade in the SM neck pickup... that loss of treble you hear is mostly due to cancellation, not due to the neck pickup being further from the bridge.

A direct demonstration of this can be had by playing with a Stratocaster, especially one with a 5-way switch and RWRP pickups. Note the treble response of the bridge pickup alone... note that the middle pickup alone also has a trebly tone... now switch to the in-between 'quack' position and you can hear the treble attenuation. Although in parallel instead of series this is the same effect for the Stringmaster.

When I first met Carco Clave at the 2012 TSGA Jamboree I asked why his neck pickup was so low... he explained that he liked the bridge pickup sound but wanted the humbucking effect still, so he lowered it all the way. I think he's changed his pickups, they looked different this year, btw, and not set up the same. If you want a meatier sound changing pickups just might be the only answer... I recently went to P90's (P-rails) on my Strat and haven't looked back, although I still prefer the stock two-pickup sound on my Stringmasters. If they're too far from the strings they can sound tinny and trebly, IMO... 1/8" seems about right to me.

Tom Snook wrote:I'm asuming that the Fender Treble phenomenon is as much due to the ash used on most Fender Steel Guitars as the pick ups,am I correct ? ...

Yes and no. While ash can lend to a brighter tone, the bigger variable at work here is the resonant frequency of the pickups design. In general, a taller and skinnier coil like Fender's will have a higher resonant frequency and be generally brighter. There is a lot more to it and many variables, but thats the core of it. Lucky for us is that today there are many talented pickup winders that can subtly manipulate the design and keep top end in check while bringing forward the big, rich, and lush part that we do like.