The Steel Guitar Forum

A Fender 1000 can really cut through the mirk!

I had the experience of listening to about eight steel players at an auditorium with very, very, bad acoustical properties. It was a long narrow building with a cathedral ceiling. Not only that, the rythum section of the band backing them was out of control. You know the type;___the drummer sounded like a quartet of jackhammers and the bassmans amp danced across the stage as he picked the strings.

With this band, at this place, all of the steel players except the one who played the Fender 1000 sounded like they were down in the well, 100 ft. below ground level, with the rest of the band.

Of course, the custom steels have more of a "quality tone" than the Fender under ideal conditions; but in this kind of a situation the shrill tone of the Fender 1000 really cuts through the mirk.

Rick<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Rick Collins on 20 May 2002 at 08:43 AM.]</p></FONT>

Yes Rick, you're right. The old Fenders had just gobs of highs, and those "highs" (the same ones, by the way, that make an Emmons carry so well) cut throught anything! However, I think most of the problem with the other players you heard were too much mids, and not enough highs. A lot of what you heard as "muddiness", or the lack of "carry" was due to the steelers setting their amps for a nice full sound on stage...only to find out that the highs fall off very rapidly, and the low mids predominate. If you don't have a lot of that "sparkle" behind you, then the audience usually loses out when the rest of the band kicks in. If you don't have a lot of speaker (multiple twelves or a fifteen) the lows will fade away too. (This is why Chalker was using two amps when everybody else was happy with one, it takes a lot.)

Truth is, that trebly sound is considered by many to be out of vogue today. But with the proper amp and settings, you can make almost any guitar sound like a Fender.

Never had a problem hearing Brumley or Mooney, did we? <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Donny Hinson on 20 May 2002 at 04:02 PM.]</p></FONT>

Bravo Donny! Many musicians as you say set their stage tones with way too many mids for a round tone, only to find out that out in the audience their steel sounds like total mud. I learned this many years ago when I was nineteen years old. I watched Al Perkins play
with The Burritos on stage. We were the opening act. Anyway, he played though a ZB through a Fender twin and on stage it was almost shrill, but when I went out in the audience it was a nice full tone leaning toward high end clarity. I saw John Jorgenson do the same thing. Many others also. I proved this by having my steel played by another player and listening to it in the audience. People soak up highs in the audience like a sponge. <FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Kevin Hatton on 20 May 2002 at 10:00 AM.]</p></FONT>

Kevin,

You are correct. Any professionally qualified sound engineer will tell you that the highs are the first to go, over distance. Bass travels the farthest.

carl

Any teenager in a car proves this.

Too much reverb can also do you in when it
comes to clarity.
Jake Doell in Vancouver