The Steel Guitar Forum

Has anyone seen a comparison of different pedal steel guitar pickups based on the kind of analysis done by Helmuth E. W. Lemme? See:

http://www.buildyourguitar.com/resources/lemme/

The measurement of the cutoff frequency, the resonant frequency, and the slope of the filter above the cutoff frequency seem to be the characteristics that really define a pickup's sound.

Here he lists the "Resonant frequencies of some well-know pickups":

http://buildyourguitar.com/resources/lemme/table.htm

If anyone has seen or heard of this kind of comparison of some of the pickups often seen on pedal steel guitars, I would love to know.

Thanks for this great resource, Alan, it has lots of good insights. I haven't seen anything similar. This guy makes a good argument for looking at the inductance and capacitance of a pickup, along with the DC resistance, if you want to predict the tone response. He also points out the importance of the pickup's load (including volume & tone controls, a volume pedal, effect pedal, amp, etc) in shaping the tone.

Mike, yes, it's a pretty amazing resource. Pretty dense with useful information. And yes, he certainly pushes the discussion away from only the usual impedance and winding questions.

I'm slowly learning more and more about electronics in general and audio-related electronics in particular, and so I'm not the person to run tests and measure some of the classic PSG pickups. Perhaps someone, somewhere might....

This language is consistent with the way that Brad Sarno describes the Z control on his Black Box and Freeloader re: resonant frequencies. Also, Bill Lawrence was notorious for not letting you off the phone until you had heard 45 minutes of discourse on the use of inductance and capacitance rather than impedance in the ratings and comparisons of respective pickups.

I've talked (actually listened) to Bill Lawrence a couple of times. His approach to building a pickup was true AC parameters and two identical model pickups can have different DC wire resistance to accommodate the correct AC parameters.

Interesting read, and a lot of precise data for sure. But what could you do with it I feel that for most musicians, a simple "How does it sound?" trumps anything else, numbers included.

I think the thing is, though, that the most well used pickups in any particular genre are going to have a fairly classic inductance and resonance curve. If you depart from that much you are not going to get traditional "good tone". Therefore impedance figures still give you a very good comparison marker or frame of reference.

Steve Sycamore wrote:I think the thing is, though, that the most well used pickups in any particular genre are going to have a fairly classic inductance and resonance curve. If you depart from that much you are not going to get traditional "good tone". Therefore impedance figures still give you a very good comparison marker or frame of reference.

What is "good tone"? What is a good tone to one may be not very good to another. I had a 71 PP Emmons (bought new) that I played for 11 years. Many consider it to be "good tone" however my opinion my Franklin had better "tone".

Jack Stoner wrote: What is "good tone"? What is a good tone to one may be not very good to another. I had a 71 PP Emmons (bought new) that I played for 11 years. Many consider it to be "good tone" however my opinion my Franklin had better "tone".

I guess you could spend your whole life trying to answer that question and the answer might be very personal. That is why I added the quotation marks and "traditional" descriptor. Yupp, if you are an experimenter then you are probably very interested in trying out a lot of options.

There are so many parts to the sound chain that the effect of one item, like a pickup, is only a very small part of the overall sound. We've all heard stories like "It sounds great with this amp, but not so good with that one", so ratings of individual parts early in the sound chain are only one small piece of the puzzle. I can see where the specs of a pickup might be useful if someone were trying to duplicate the sound of a particular pickup, but almost nobody does that! Instead, most everyone is looking to "one-up" the competition by coming up with something different of better.

Exactly. I'll just mention that a powerful EQ is a far more flexible and economic way of experimenting and finding tones that work for you.

But in addition to tone, dynamics are possibly of even more importance to how you connect in musical ways to your instrument. They are not as easily visualizable or predictable in the numbers contained in a spreadsheet.

Common wisdom about pickups is very misleading. It is good to have an open mind, experiment and use your ears.

The Q point is the important part. How you get there is variable.

A Lawrence pickup may have a resistance of .36 and be too bright. A Bigsby pickup can have a resistance of .05 and be as rich and deep sounding as any. PLus they can both have very similar Q points.