Those great sounds from vintage wood body steels were made with much lighter wound pickups than we use today, and tube amps of course.

Why have most guys abandoned the lightly wound units??.. I personally use an 8 k pickup, which is a GREAT sound with my Fender tube amps. Most players think I'm a nut, but I get a very vintage sound from a modern steel...

Is it possible guys think you need strong pickups for good sustain??.. I personally don't buy it, I think sustain is more a function of guitar design, and I'm skeptical of the notion that a 20 K pickup will give longer sustain that a 10 K one..

On standard guitar, a trick to increase the sustain is to LOWER the pickup.. decreasing magnetic pull on the strings, allowing them to vibrate more freely... it works too.. you just have to crank the amp a little higher ...

I dunno,,, anyone care to comment on this??.. I know I'm in the minority, but I still say the reason the old steels had that magical sound was NOT the bodies and mechanisms.. it was the bright clear, warm sound of sensibly wound pickups... Just MHO.. what do you guys think?? bob

[This message was edited by Bob Carlucci on 12 August 2005 at 09:23 AM.]

To me, an electric guitar/steel is still an 'acoustic' instrument where most of the tone/sustain is generated by the instrument itself, and the pickups job is to 'transfer' that sound to the amp (I realize there are wildly different opinions on this though). My Asher Electro Hawaiian is a perfect example of this IMO, when I plug it in I recognize the beautiful warm tone I hear when I play it acoustically.

Guess it's all a matter of personal taste and what you're used to, but I prefer my pickups to be in the regular single-coil < P-90 output range....

Steinar

------------------
www.gregertsen.com

Even when you look at or hold an old pick up, you can tell it has less "beef" than late model pickups...

------------------
73 PRO II, 79/80 PRO III
Steelkings,Fender guitars,Preston covers,
and Taylor(Tut that is)
Reso's
"Of all the things Ive lost in life, I miss my mind the most"

With a tube amp, saturation is achieved by harmonic distortion due to gradual current limiting in the power tube, leading to a 'natural compression' effect. The tubes saturate so gradually, that many find the harmonic distortion sound musical, but not everybody does.

Most people consider solid state amps 'linear'. If an amp is acting linearly, like most pedal steel players say they prefer, then as the input signal envelope gets smaller, so does the output signal envelope. But I don't believe most modern solid-state amps are truly 'linear' like that. Most have built-in compression/limiting (probably based on the signal envelope, not the instantaneous signal) so having these high-output pickups cleanly drives the amp into compression, hence increases sustain. Just a different sound than the tube approach, and de gustibus non disputandum. I think there are reasonable applications for both.

This might help explain why some prefer tube amps and others prefer solid-state. It's the interaction between pickup and amp that really makes the difference. The tube-amp guys with lower-output, glassier-sounding pickups complain that the solid-state amps are harsh and sterile. For them, they're right - they need the tube amp, which their lower-output pickups can push to the edge of the linear region, and sound great. The solid-state amp guys with the hot-wound pickups complain that the tube amps sound distorted. For them, they're also right - the hot pickup pushes the solid-state amp into the edge of the compression-region and get that little bit of 'lift' like a tube player gets. They do sound different, but both approaches are valid, IMO.

I've noticed a trend these days with players who are using tube preamps and/or tube amps. They seem to generally prefer the under-wound, more vintage sounding pickups. I've seen a few guys who have had their new True-Tones wound up around 18.5k for their transistor rigs. I've seen others have them wound down around 16k for their tube rigs. I've got an old ZB with the 3 taps on the pickup. The taps are roughly 8k, 14k, and 21k. Thru tube rigs I much prefer the 14k setting. Thru say a NV112 or LTD, the 21k setting has more "warmth".

So my theory is that pickups grew to be overwound to compensate for the harsher sound of transistors in attempts to re-gain some lost warmth. The problem I hear is that overwinding may tame the highs, but it also takes away some clarity and definition and also makes the sound "harder" and not harmonically richer or sweeter. Personally, I much prefer the sound of cleanly run tubes mixed with the old-school, "cooler" pickups. I think it's great that Jerry Wallace will wind them to whatever your heart desires.

.. To each his own I guess.. The SS/21K guys sound beautiful.. as do the 11 K/ tube guys... Its all about the sound thats in your head... I have tubes,leaky caps, weak pickups and rusty strings in my head... thats MY tone!! bob

Duh???

Distortion will almost always rear its ugly head when you try to get big output while having the master volume control set comparatively low. The solution is to run the master wide open, or nearly so, and set your pre-gain at the middle of it's range (or higher), and then just control your volume with the volume pedal.

Most amps will handle almost a full volt on the input, and no pickup will ever exceed that in normal playing.

Bar crashes excepted.

quote:

---

If a pickup distorts because of high output, the easy solution is to raise the gains on the amp, and just use less volume pedal. (It's the volume pedal, and not the pickup, that determines how much gain hits the first stage in the amp!)

---

Are you suggesting one should run the volume pedal continuously well below unity-gain? If so, I would not do that. Why have a hotly-wound pickup, just to be constantly padded by the volume pedal? With traditional strong-magnet pickup design (exempting some of Bill Lawrence's designs), increasing the number of winds increases the inductance significantly, which chokes off high-end. If the extra output contributes to unwanted distortion, I'd rather lower the number of windings than pad the output below unity-gain.

quote:

---

I've seen some steelers that have the pre-gain set on 5, and the master on 4, and then they complain about distortion from a "hot" pickup when they floor the volume pedal! ... The solution is to run the master wide open, or nearly so, and set your pre-gain at the middle of it's range (or higher), and then just control your volume with the volume pedal.

---

quote:

---

Are you suggesting one should run the volume pedal continuously well below unity-gain?

---

By jove, I think he's got it!

Yes. That's the way we drive a car. We have a "loud pedal" there, too, and normally, we only use a fraction of it's travel. I won't belabor the point, except to say that of course, you can swap tubes, mod the amp, lower the pickup, change the pickup, pick easier, or... just use a little less volume pedal. They all have the same result in the gain department. When you drive an amp to distortion, you're giving it too much signal. Any way you lower the signal eliminates the distortion problem. I prefer the easy way out.

quote:

---

Yes. That's the way we drive a car.

---

Well, myself, I've been known to put the accelerator pedal-to-the-metal from time to time, and I don't want my car to freak out if I do. If the suspension can't handle the max acceleration, then the car is not designed properly, IMO. As for driving style, I'm originally from Boston, that should explain everything. YMMV.

I see several disadvantages to the 'constant pad below 0dB' approach, the most important I outlined above - overwinding tends to muddy up conventionally designed pickups, IMO. Guitar players went through this 'gotta have hot-wound pickups for more sustain' during the 80s, and yanked out their old Tele pickups and Les Paul PAFs (I can't tell you how many guys traded them even to vintage guitar dealers for DiMarzio Super Distortions, Duncan 1/4 pounders, etc.). But many, if not most of them found in the long haul that they couldn't get the sweet sound they craved. Now, there is a whole industry building things 'like they used to be, to get that cool vintage sound'. Remember, I'm not arguing against high-output pickups completely here - I already agreed that I don't see this problem when used with modern solid-state steel amps. I'm talking specifically about tube amps, as was Bob C. to start.

To me, another disadvantage of always half-pedaling is that the obvious full-on fixed-stop is not going to sound good. On guitar or steel, I normally set things up so that pedal-to-the-metal is my loudest solo volume, and I want it to sound good. Finally, I also prefer to have the full range of the volume pedal to work with.

I agree that half-pedaling or other padding is one viable (though not ideal, to me) solution if one has a pickup that is already overwound - and I do say overwound, since we are arguing about the condition where it doesn't sound good full-on. But like Bob C., I just don't understand why an argument is being made for overwinding.

To the stumps analogy - you're building a house and there's a big tree right in the middle of the spot where you want to pour your basement. Do you get rid of the tree or put a hole in the center of your house, and build around it. Me, unless I want an atrium, I'd cut that tree down, get the stump out of the way, and just pour concrete.

[This message was edited by Dave Mudgett on 16 August 2005 at 09:34 AM.]

The answer is no. Most any old Dano tube amp I've played through (mainly for guitar) has a low threshold for distortion. I would not typically use one of these for steel. A high-output pickup will drive it into distortion quickly, which means that the output signal will saturate. When the output is saturated, increasing or decreasing the magnitude of the input doesn't change it. So as the input signal dies down, for quite a while, the output signal continues to have the same magnitude - this is the typical tube amp sustain I described in my first post here.

The problem with this kind of sustain for steel is that if the amp is pushed hard, it sounds distorted. That's great if you're going for a distorted steel sound, but if you want clean, it isn't.

What the lower output pickup does is not drive the amp so hard, making it cleaner-sounding, which is more the 'classic' sound of pedal steel. Bob C. argues in the first post that sustain is a function more of the instrument than the amp. I agree with him if one is not pushing the amp into distortion and not using a sustain-increasing device like a compressor. There's the 'natural' sustain of the guitar, and there's the extension to that sustain by any effects and the amp.

This started as a question of pickup design, not whether or not one should use the equipment they have. For good or for bad, most of my steels also have high-output pickups - that's the way most steel players want them, so that's how most are built. One can make adjustments to work with them, and obviously most of us do. But I agree with Bob that a lower-output pickup usually sounds better with tube amps, to my ears. As I said above, some of Bill Lawrence's pickups are a major exception here.

Why would anyone care? Well, for me, I almost always play guitar and steel together, and I distinctly prefer the sound of tube amps for guitar. For me, this is a practical matter of making my steel sound as good as possible with my tube guitar amps, so I don't have to lug around two amps to gigs.

I LOVE the sound of the Willy, but its MUCH thicker than the Carter and needs the bass/treble settings adjusted accordingly.

I am thinking of getting the Willy pickup rewound a little less hot , but after lowering the pickup, distortion is no longer a problem.

My Fender 400 is@ 8.5 K...hmmm..
Now,just about everyone has a soft spot for the tone of the old Fender cable jobs... why?.. No magic really.
Same reason ALL the old wood body steels sounded sweet to our ears.
same reason old 6 string guitars sounded great to most of us.... TUBE amps receiving a clean signal from sensibly wound pickups...

Our bud Dave is correct.. guitar mfgs, are now racing one another to get back to the 60's with "retro" pickup designs... they worked.. Back in the late 70's we were falling over one another trying to get hot,hotter hottest pickups into anything with strings... me too...bob

It doesn't make sense to me to set the amp volume so that you will be playing your solo leads with the volume pedal maxed out. You would then have no volume pedal sustain for your solo, when you most need it. Maybe that would work for fast picking, when there is no time for adding any volume pedal sustain; but I don't see how anyone can count on all solos being so fast. I always feel I need to have reserve pedal throw for sustain, even when playing my loudest. Therefore, my amp is set to play the loudest I will need with my volume pedal about half on, leaving lots of room for sustain. If I ever played with the volume pedal all the way floored, it would blow my speaker and everyone’s eardrums. Having this reserve volume pedal sustain is one reason steelers need such big amps. Maybe this is also why I’ve never noticed my steel overdriving my tube amps (I think the TrueTone on my uni is 18.5 kohms).

I have the treble dialed back on my Hilton volume pedal, and still have to cut back the highs on most amps. So any loss of highs because of extra windings on the pickup doesn’t seem to be of much concern to me. However, loss of definition in the lows is some concern. And since I use tube amps, from what I’ve read above, maybe I should try a pickup with less windings. So cutting back on the windings to get improved tube amp sound might make sense. But cutting back on windings so you can play with the volume pedal floored doesn’t make sense to me. Forgive me, but that sounds like a guitar player not using appropriate pedal steel technique.

quote:

---

You get the sustain with the volume pedal.

---

I see your point about sometimes wanting extra signal level for sustain as a note trails off, especially on a slow tune, and sometimes also use this technique. My preferred solution, using a tube amp, is to increase the gain/volume in the amp or effects, and not overwind the pickup.

On old amps with fixed gain and no effects, I agree with you that options to increase the gain were limited. But why is a hot pickup needed on an amp with variable gain, as almost all modern design amps have? Just raise the amp gain, get instant room on the volume pedal. I think the bigger issue here is that modern solid-state amps are designed around the hotter-wound pickups. I don't like the sound of lighter-wound pickups through these amps either. Maybe some guys like their Tele through a Session 400, etc., but nobody I play with would tolerate that.

quote:

---

But cutting back on windings so you can play with the volume pedal floored doesn't make sense to me.

---

I didn't argue for playing with the volume pedal floored all, or even most, of the time. But on a faster/louder tune, I prefer to have the volume pedal set to my max useful volume, so I don't accidentally blow anyone away in the heat of battle. My bandmates appreciate a hard-limiter on the louder tunes. The point is that I want to choose how to set it, and not have it forced on me by circumstance.

quote:

---

Forgive me, but that sounds like a guitar player not using appropriate pedal steel technique.

---

As I said, I often play both guitar and steel at the same time, and need to make it work for both. I also was not aware that there was such a strict orthodoxy in technique. Now, I admit, I've played steel for only a few years, and I don't claim to 'know it all', not by a long shot. I'm listening carefully here for new ideas.

quote:

---

So cutting back on the windings to get improved tube amp sound might make sense.

---

Well, these old tube amps were designed around a more lightly wound, lower-output pickup, but this is strictly a matter of personal taste. I prefer it, but that doesn't make it "correct".

But remember, in my application, I'm specifically trying to make this work with my lighter-wound guitar pickups, through the same tube amp. These are usually Teles or Strats (pickups wound to around 6.5-7 KOhm with a narrow aperture), or jazzy tones from a Gibson Humbucker (wound to around 7.8 KOhms with a wider aperture). Both of these are quite a bit lower-output than the typical PSG pickup, and both sound great for their given purpose through an old Fender tube amp, to my tastes.

With most of my hotly-wound steel pickups, I currently either need to bring separate amps for guitar and steel, or use something like a Pod, which effectively gives me different amp models and EQ settings at the touch of a button. It's not just the pickup output, but the overall tone. Amps also have a 'voice', and need to be matched to the 'voice' of the pickup.

I'd prefer to just be able to plug guitar and steel straight into a Dual Showman Reverb + JBL D/K-130 cab for a louder gig, or a tricked-out Deluxe Reverb with an EV SRO for a low-volume gig, and have everything sound fine. Except for my BMI with a Lawrence 705, they sound muddy no matter what I do. With the 705, I needed to lower the pickup, as Ricky Davis suggests, but it sounds clean and clear. My Sierras have 3-way Danny Shields pickups, and the light setting helps, but is still drives the tube amps too hard and doesn't have as much clarity as I'd like. I can tweak any of these amps to sound good for guitar but not steel, or vice versa. This is Hobson's choice, and I think it's possible to do better.

quote:

---

... any loss of highs because of extra windings on the pickup doesn't seem to be of much concern to me. However, loss of definition in the lows is some concern.

---

I agree that high end is not the issue for me either. High end is easy to come by, and steel guitar can get shrill easily, but it's the overall frequency response and "Q" factor that I'm talking about. With traditional pickup design, overwinding affects both high and low end clarity adversely, to my ears.

quote:

---

It's hard for me to imagine that anyone ever increased pickup windings to get more distortion-sustain on steel.

---

I don't think anybody has argued that here (except perhaps for blues and rock playing). We all agree that pushing an amp into distortion is not desirable for the clean steel sounds most of us want. I argued above that a higher signal level, produced by high-output pickups, pushes solid-state amps into their compressor/limiter region, which does increase sustain without harmonic distortion. I don't really know if that's the reason for the pickup change, but it did seem to occur around the time most people switched from tube to solid-state amps.

quote:

---

I don't think most steelers would be happy with that sound from their modern pedal steel.

---

It is also true that for up tempo play many players leave the pedal at one postition, and just use it to regulate the volume level, not for sustain. In fact some players do that to intentionally mimic the traditional slide guitar sound for rock and blues. But I want to be able to add that volume pedal sustain at will. For me that is one of the added features of steel that transcends typical slide guitar.

Of course fine control of the volume pedal is one of the most difficult aspects of steel tone, and I am still struggling with it. The louder the band is, the more difficult volume pedal control seems to become, because the acceptable volume range between "lost in the mix" and "painfully too loud" becomes narrower.

Volume pedal technique is definitely very subtle. I have used one for guitar for a long time, and before that, I used the volume knob in a similar way. Of course, guitar and steel are different, but it's not night and day. It's always a challenge to make it sound just right on a slow, sensitive tune. But for me, most of this subtlety is lost in loud, uptempo stuff.

You're right, in a loud band, there's a very thin edge between "lost in the mix" and "painfully loud". Especially on blues, rockabilly, or country guitar solos, I'm not known for being bashful, particularly as the night wears on and the band/crowd energy level increases. So on the loud, uptempo stuff, my volume pedal is a useful 'reminder' for those moments when my better judgement also gets "lost in the mix". This approach has probably kept me from getting fired more than once.

I don't really mind taking some 'heavy artillery' for a big show on a big stage. But especially for small club gigs, it seems to me that there oughta be a way to simplify and still get the tone I want across the board. Right now, for this kind of gig, I switch sounds with a Pod into a 50 watt clean bass amp with a 12" speaker. This works OK in a live club mix, and I think most of my colleagues even prefer the slightly less crisp tone this gives. But for myself, I still prefer the straight sound plugged straight into the right amp. Some recent recordings highlighted this difference to me yet again.