Sound of a fender steel

[Billy McCombs]

I love the sound of my Emmons But what’s the best effect stomp box or settings to get a fender sound out of it for a Bakersfield sound song? Or can it even be done.

[J Fletcher]

A single coil pickup that's tapped at around 9 k ohms would get you headed in that direction .

[Bill Fisher]

Buy a Fender.

[Donny Hinson]

No, a stomp box wouldn't do it.

The Emmons sound is characterized by a lot of mids and highs, and a lot of sustain. Whereas, the Fender sound is characterized by a lot of highs, and relatively poor sustain. Therefore, the easiest route to duplicating the (Fender steel) sound would be to use lighter-wound pickups, and a lighter bar; perhaps a hollow one.

However, I think you must also consider the effect of player's style on the sound. Much of what we hear when we listen to Emmons and Mooney is their particular style. Those two guys could swap guitars all they wanted, but Buddy Emmons could never sound like Ralph Mooney, and Ralph Mooney could never sound like Buddy Emmons.

[Billy McCombs]

Your right about the difference in the two, a good example is Rainy Day Woman. I have a hollow bar I will give it a try. Thanks Donnie

[Ricky Davis]

[K Maul]

Rainy Day Woman was played on a Sho~Bud with pickups wound to “Fender specs”, apparently. But not on a Fender, nor the funky Magnatone that Ralph put pedals on when he was with Wynn Stewart and Buck.

[Bob Carlucci]

Easy,, First off, you want a wood neck and maple/lacquer pedal steel guitar...
Next, have a good single coil pickup rewound with a coil tap... One tap should be around 9 K...
Last but not least use an vintage Fender tube amp.. You will get pretty close.. Not exact because of the Fenders unique changer,cable system, and cast aluminum frame that was OUTSIDE the body,,, However, It can get you well within the ballpark...

Here's an interesting tidbit- Years ago I was at a small pedal steel jam at forumite Larry Jamison's music store here in NY state... At that time I had a Carter S10 with 5&5 and a Truetone with coils tapped at 12 and 8.5...I was doodling around on it with two long time pedal steel players watching me as guys were starting to set their guitars up.
One looked at the other and exclaimed- "That thing sounds just like my Fender 400"... So yeah if you wind the pickups like a Fender, it will get you around where you want to be, without going out and buying a Fender.... OR, you can get a good EQ and work with it...That works too!

[b0b]

There's also the fact that Fender cable/yoke pulls sound different from rod/bellcrank pulls. It's mechanically impossible to make that organic pitch-changing curve with a modern guitar.

[Steve Hinson]

Pick as close to the changer as possible...

SH

[Bill Fisher]

Yes. b0b. That is why I said "Buy a Fender".

Bill

[David Mitchell]

What Bob and Bill said. My first double neck in 1972 was a Fender 2000 and then I bought it back a couple of years ago from the music store I traded it in to 40 something years ago. It's a radically different instrument than any other pedal steel. Not only does the cable pulls affect the sound but it's a 3" thick slab of ash wood mounted in a heavy cast iron frame.
Sure you can brighten any steel up so it twangs but no cigars as for as the Fender sound. Different beast altogether.

[Donny Hinson]

Actually, it's an aluminum frame! Well, aluminum with a relatively high magnesium content. It's sometimes called Almag, or Almag 535.

[Chris Scruggs]

A good trick is to move your right hand close to your bar and mash the pedals really FAST (to simulate the cables yanking the strings up to pitch). Moving the picking hand away from the pickup and the changer, ans close to the bar, changes the frequency of your guitar gives you that thin, hollow kind of sound we associate with a Fender 400 or 1000. Also, if you were playing traditional country in the Bakersfield style, stick to the higher strings, play lots of single note lines, and use your B and C pedal a lot. That helps get the Mooney sound, and that’s much of what we associate as “sounding like a Fender” (remember, Moon sounded the same on just about any guitar he played, a lot of it came from HIM!).

[Michael Sawyer]

I love both my 400s.
But Buddy Charleton could sound pretty dang Fenderish on that old Sho Bud.
I want one of them too.

[J D Sauser]

The Fender PSG's were in so MANY ways different to what most of the mid 60's on PSG's look and operate.

First, conceptually they were "Pedaled Console Steels". A "Console Steel" being a lap steel with legs.
Today's pedal steels have cabinets and legs attached to metal end-plates.
Thus the Fender was carved out of a huge chunk of wooden cross section. The wood was "carefully" chosen with resonance in mind.
I personally don't care much for hard-rock maple used in most of today's PSGs, except for it's structural strength and availability.
Mechanical differences and pickups set aside, one in my opinion most under rated difference in the FENDER design is the much lower string clearance from the BODY (of which the neck is an integral part of). Their strings hover barley 1/2" over the BODY, whereas on the PSG design that took over in the 60's, the strings are more than that over the NECK, and many have their necks just as hollow non-structural "caps".
It changes the leverage of string tension so dramatically, you could almost speak of two different instruments.

Pickups? Yes and no. You can hear that West Coast sound on ShoBuds and ZB's of the time. They will have had other windings than what became the standard later.
Amps were different to and they clocked them in differently. Many amps were "nasal" by design in an intend to CUT thru a mix which always tends to mud up.
Yet, I strum my Fender PSG even un plugged and it has IT's sound.
Speedy West, who laid most of his most famous Capitol Records track down on a Fender (which had him sound very different than with his Bigsby in previous years), never got that sound back with later guitars.

So, want that Fender sound? Yeah, I am afraid too, ya might have to git one.



(left some room to make a reasonably "short" answer longer! HA!)


... J-D.

[Rex Wiseman]

I have an Emmons pickup that Ron Jr. wound for me. It's tapped at 8K - 18.5K - and 20-22K.. If interested PM me. I used it on a LeGrande II SD10 (I installed a neck selector switch to change the sounds) It worked great!!

[Bob Carlucci]

The Fender PSG's were in so MANY ways different to what most of the mid 60's on PSG's look and operate.

First, they were pedaled console steels. A console steel being a lap steel with legs.
Today's pedal steels have cabinets and legs attached to metal end-plates.
Thus the Fender had a huge chunk of wooden cross section. The wood was "carefully" chosen with resonance in mind. I personally don't care much for hard-rock maple, except for it's structural strength and availability.
Mechanical differences and pickups set aside, one in my opinion most under rated difference is the much lower string clearance from the BODY (of which the neck is an integral part of). It changes the leverage of string tension so dramatically, you could almost speak of two different instruments.

Want that Fender sound? Yeah, I am afraid too, ya might have to git one.



(left some room to make a reasonably "short" answer longer! HA!)


... J-D.

\\ I see you mentioned hard rock maple... I believe the cable Fender pedal steel guitars were made of Alder....

[Bob Carlucci]

anyone wants that sound, tap your pickup around -8-9 K... It will get as close as anyone could want.. I have been doing so since the 70's.. Either that, or get a 4 wire humbucker and a 3 way on-on-on switch.. The isolated rear single coil is REAL close to that magical sound ... thats what I am using on my old Marlen.
Once I heard how it sounded, I sold off my last Fender 800. Tonally there was simply not that much difference.... bob

[Herb Steiner]

In my experience, the sound of a 50's and 60's Fender steel was replicated quite closely with a Sho~Bud Fender Artist model from the late 70's, either S-10 or D-10. I had a D-10 for a brief period of time that I kept for sessions in case the producer wanted that vintage type tone.

I attribute the sound to the Fender pickup and the fact that the changer fingers rotated on a knife blade type axle rather than the more common round axle of all the other guitars.

[David Mitchell]

My old Fender 2000 I revisted about 7 years ago. I bought it in 1972 used and played it about 2 years before buying a new MSA D-10. It's definitely a different tone. I like the challenge of no knee levers sometimes. It forces you to make use of the strings, bar and pedals more than the modern way of playing.
A lot of those old sounds was just sheer pedal pumping that can be done on any guitar. I got extremely sensitive pedal action on the EMCI so I can quiver the notes on the pedals similar to the old style of playing.

In the second video I'm playing the same Mooney style on an EMCI with an E-66 pickup.

https://youtu.be/mJBIdhKteOY

https://youtu.be/r9HTBywu328

[J D Sauser]

... J-D.
\\ I see you mentioned hard rock maple... I believe the cable Fender pedal steel guitars were made of Alder....

Sorry Bob, I was unclear, I did mean to suggest maple being used on today's PSG's vs. Fender having carefully used woods for resonance like Alder (and Ash on some non-Pedal-steels).

I just now edited my post to that effect.

Thanks!... J-D.

[Jim Sliff]

What J Fletcher said.

I've been doing guitar and amp tech work for 50 years, and if you want to approach the tone of a Fender on an Emmons you need a pickup wound to a relatively low DC resistance - 11k or lower on a 10 string will get you close; 98-9k even better. The low resistance also alters the inductance, which is the real key.

also experiment with lowering the pickup height - too close and the magnetic pull contributes to the typical "trebly" pedal steel tone.

And on an Emmons for God's sake USE THE TONE AND VOLUME CONTROLS! They interact and the volume pedal doesn't do the same thing as the control.

Another trick is to have pickups wired with a tapped coil, but wire the second coil as a "boost" coil with a simple SPST switch wired to the output tab on the volume control. At the very upper end of the volume control travel - assuming you DO have a tone control installed - an odd phasing effect occurs, which sounds very much like Sneaky Pete's two-pickup sound.

Note this all depends on having a tonal platform that begins with a wood slab it's relly tough to pull off tonal tweaks like these on aluminum guitars.