The Steel Guitar Forum

This is purely my opinion based on my subjective experience. If a steel has dull low strings and you fix it with eq the high strings get shrill if your guitar does not resonate properly. A great steel will accentuate the even overtones and sound clear and strong in every register. An Emmons PP is known for this. Also a few other all pull guitars. You can’t use EQ and fix a steel that doesn’t have the balance in the first place.

That is what I hear and seek out in pedalsteels . Different brands really do sound different. A great steel will have even volume and a full tone on every string and all over the neck. If you try to fix a dull or shrill spot on the neck with eq you might cause a new problem somewhere else.

This is true of all sources, including microphones. You can't increase what isn't there to begin with.

and this is why fresh strings are important !

New strings resonate and sustain - old strings LACK sustain and do not resonate the same , so we try to compensate with EQ.

To "maintain or restore" the tone of your Instrument, start at the Instrument !

I had the same experience when I was making pickups for people. I found I could enhance the sound of a steel with variations in the pickup but I couldn’t correct the tone. After talking with a potential customer about what they were having problems with pretty much half the time I told them I couldn’t help them because they needed to practice more or that they didn’t like the basic sound of there steel. I was the worlds worst pickup salesman !

Tone is in the hands? Your attack needs to be the same all over the neck even with brand-new strings!

Ian Rae wrote:This is true of all sources, including microphones. You can't increase what isn't there to begin with.

Well, the real truth is that most of the time, what you're looking for as far as tone goes is there, it's just not as loud, pronounced, or balanced as you might like it. As I stated, I use a graphic EQ almost all the time when I'm listening to music. My steel rig is modified so that I don't have to normally use one when I'm gigging...but that's just me. I've also salvaged recordings that were pretty much "unlistenable" to my tastes.

Put simply, a graphic EQ (or a parametric EQ) is nothing but a more sophisticated set of tone controls, and don't let any one tell you otherwise. It has more capability and versatility that the standard "bass-middle-treble" tone controls because it has more bands, and it usually has boost capabilities (which most passive amp tone control networks do not). If you don't need or like one, and your particular guitar/amp combination gives you everything you want, then don't use it. But please, let's get of this "they're bad, and you shouldn't use them" mentality. It's a disservice to players who aren't happy with what they're hearing.

What Donny said. I use them often when the balance I want isn't there. Some equipment doesn't give enough control or the frequency center is wrong for the steel.

There's kinda an often broken EQ rule in audio:

EQ is your enemy. It introduces phase distortion, and that phase distortion can sometimes be a greater problem than what you're trying to fix.

The takeaway is that other than our preamp EQ/Tone Section where we initially shape the voice of our instrument, typically the tone knobs on the amp, it may be advisable to not do any other EQ if we can avoid it. Address it in the pickup choice, the signal path, the devices the chain, the speaker and amp choices, etc. Extra EQ is not only more phase distortion but it's more crap in the signal path, cheap resistors, cheap opamps, cheap resistors.

I'm a fan of signal path minimalism. There's so much complex harmonic content in a pedal steel, the more crap we add to the signal path, the more we put a veil over that pure source. So adding EQ is a last resort in my opinion, only there to repair a problem. A compromise.

The greatest tones most of us have heard were from a master player thru a pot pedal into a tube amp which was miked and recorded. Here we are nearing 100 years of amplified guitars, and we're still finding that 1930's (ok, 1960's) tech is still kinda winning the steel guitar tone wars.

Bob's point is great here. EQ'ing frequencies does not fix things. EQ brightness into the low notes, then the high registers bite your head off. EQ the highs to be mellower, then the lows are mud. I see people fighting mid-treble and high treble harshness with EQ yet using an entirely solid state rig. Chasing things with EQ is a fools errand that doesn't affect harmonic content, and harmonic content is everything with pedal steel. Running the guitar signal thru vacuum tubes is the no brainer every time. Nature's sweetener, harshness reducer, low-to-high balancer. Just ask every single classic tune Lloyd ever gave us. Or Brumley. Or Jerry Byrd. Or most of Buddy's catalog. Hughey's best tones. Jimmy Day's classics. Franklin. I don't know of one single pedal steel classic with gorgeous tone that was achieved with an EQ pedal or a graphic EQ in the rig to get it.

Tubes.

Brad

That was a thing of beauty, Brad.

Everything is an EQ of sorts. Hand position, speaker choice, pickup choice, impedance matching, choice of picks, string gauge, pretty much everything.

Why didn't players use graphic EQ's back is the '60s when all that great stuff was played? Probably because they didn't have them! Really Brad, it wasn't until solid state stuff came of age that small and inexpensive units were even available to the average player. And, the "phase distortion" argument, as I've mentioned before, is really only germane to the purist who wants nothing other than a volume control, and maybe single tone control. And as you probably know, they also want Class A amplification because it sounds better than push-pull output circuits. Yes, there are a few players out there that might be swept off their feet with a Little Walter Octal, but it's just not my cup of tea. Why? Because it just won't make the sound that I want to hear.

You see, I happen to believe that nothing is off-limits if it gives me the sound I want. That said, I do realize that so many steelers are stuck in a mindset of "one good tone". I also find it funny that players will talk all forms of overdrive, fuzz, distortion, flange, delay, chorus, reverb and compression, and how to use them. And then in almost the same breath, they'll they'll tell you how bad this sinister monster "phase distortion" is, and that it's something to be avoided at all costs (when all of those EFX produce some form of distortion). Many guitar players have a graphic EQ on their pedal boards, but guitar players are far more open to a variety of sounds, as opposed to just one or two pure tones that a few famous players had on steel records long ago. Most guitar players also have multiple pickups and tone control networks in their guitars because one sound or one tone just doesn't cut it. Maybe Joe Pass worried about phase distortion and preferred having a limited palette, but they don't.

I respect everything you (and a couple of others) have said, and I also understand your reasoning. I just happen to not be in agreement. Variety is the spice of life, as they say.

I’ve got nothing against eq as a tool. It can be a great way to shape a sound. But it cannot correct an unbalanced steels sound. Same as you cannot make dead strings ring true after the odd overtone partials dominate.

If you are unhappy with your tone check to see if the 3rd string is much quieter then the lower strings. Play each note on every string and see if there are any dead spots. Do this while un amplified. You might not like your steel on a basic level. Different pickups, amp settings or most any signal chain modifications will not help much. If you like your steel and it suits you screw around with stuff all you want. I sure do !

The phase distortion issue is pretty subtle but can be a problem when trying to stay present in a cluttered mix for recording and can cause spikes on certain high notes in the PA when playing in a loud band. It makes the sound guy dip you down in the mix and then they leave you down.

The Joe Pass example is what I’m talking about. The guy was playing a perfect guitar and had no limitations in his technique. The graphic eq helped shape an already full sound. He wasn’t trying to make his fender squire with old strings sound just like a Gibson 175.

When I started as an audio engineer at the BBC in the early 70s eq was very limited and many of the older studios had none! The most control we had over the sound was mic choice and placement, which I fear may be lost arts.

To me, the problem I have with graphic EQ's is not nearly as much about the phase distortion problems, which are very real the heavier you EQ, but it's all the many electronic stages of crap the sweet guitar signal has to go thru, being degraded at each capacitor, each opamp, over and over again. When we mix all that additional signal path componentry (aka: crap), and phase distortion, and the limitations of the fixed Q curves for each EQ band, I just can only consider a graphic EQ a band aid fixing a problem better addressed elsewhere.

There's something so nice about a passive filter network's purity, a Fender tone-stack or a Peavey Session 400 tone circuit or the many other classic steel amps that have these musical and minimal EQ stages. If we can't shape our tone there, then me personally, I'll look at other aspects in the chain, buffering, effects, pickups, speaker, speaker cabinet... Etc.

And generally I've seen this thinking for years in the studio and with instrument amplification, peoples' ears are wanting a quality to the tone and they attack it with EQ, thinking they want more or less of a frequency range where really the TONE, the quality they're after is about HARMONICS. And these harmonics come from the circuit designs, even transistor designs, some have rich, musical harmonic content. I've seen people trying to cut thru a loud stage by forcing more treble with their EQ, perhaps their graphic EQ, but that same player playing thru a tube amp may have never needed to fight thru the mix since the tone naturally had so much rich harmonic content, easily heard thru a dense mix without trying to force audibility with more treble. Basically, EQ's don't give us musical harmonics. It merely alters the amplitude of frequencies, and in my experience that's not where we find the ear-candy musicality of our gear.


B

Donny Hinson wrote:Why didn't players use graphic EQ's back is the '60s when all that great stuff was played? Probably because they didn't have them! Really Brad, it wasn't until solid state stuff came of age that small and inexpensive units were even available to the average player. And, the "phase distortion" argument, as I've mentioned before, is really only germane to the purist who wants nothing other than a volume control, and maybe single tone control. And as you probably know, they also want Class A amplification because it sounds better than push-pull output circuits. Yes, there are a few players out there that might be swept off their feet with a Little Walter Octal, but it's just not my cup of tea. Why? Because it just won't make the sound that I want to hear.

You see, I happen to believe that nothing is off-limits if it gives me the sound I want. That said, I do realize that so many steelers are stuck in a mindset of "one good tone". I also find it funny that players will talk all forms of overdrive, fuzz, distortion, flange, delay, chorus, reverb and compression, and how to use them. And then in almost the same breath, they'll they'll tell you how bad this sinister monster "phase distortion" is, and that it's something to be avoided at all costs (when all of those EFX produce some form of distortion). Many guitar players have a graphic EQ on their pedal boards, but guitar players are far more open to a variety of sounds, as opposed to just one or two pure tones that a few famous players had on steel records long ago. Most guitar players also have multiple pickups and tone control networks in their guitars because one sound or one tone just doesn't cut it. Maybe Joe Pass worried about phase distortion and preferred having a limited palette, but they don't.

I respect everything you (and a couple of others) have said, and I also understand your reasoning. I just happen to not be in agreement. Variety is the spice of life, as they say.

Hey Brad I have a Mullen RP guitar and a Session 400 and a Session 500 and I get harmonic distortion on both. Where is a good place to look?

David Denney wrote:Hey Brad I have a Mullen RP guitar and a Session 400 and a Session 500 and I get harmonic distortion on both. Where is a good place to look?

Well there's the good kind of harmonic distortion those are known for, that musical halo they make. But if it's audible distortion, the first place to start is to replace ALL the electrolytic caps in there. There are some in the power supply, some in the power amp section and a good handful of little ones in the signal path. Likely that'll clean it right up, back to or better than new.

I always start there, then re-assess.

Brad

@Bob, I know you had one of these once (may still have it?), did you ever try steel direct through it? I've got a poor boy plug of this EQ that I like a LOT, very musical, but I tend to use it on a drum bus or mix mostly. Curious...

Bill Terry wrote:@Bob, I know you had one of these once (may still have it?), did you ever try steel direct through it? I've got a poor boy plug of this EQ that I like a LOT, very musical, but I tend to use it on a drum bus or mix mostly. Curious...

I use it when I mix but haven’t felt the need to use it while tracking. The pultec thing is magical . There is a midrange focused pultec that I’m afraid to check out.

Bob wrote:There is a midrange focused pultec that I’m afraid to check out.

LOL... I hear ya, the Sweetwater guy has my phone number on speed dial I'm sure...