Lower cost Telonics Combo

[Dave Nutt]

I've been lucky in that the sound that I like to hear my pedal steel making is totally different from the modern, nasal, steel sound that seems to be so popular, and a good old fashioned Peavey with a 15 inch speaker is all I need to get 'my' tone.

Can't argue with that Richard, I guess I'm lucky also. .
Dave.

[Malcolm]

Totally disagree with you Billy, I have never had a piece of gear that made me a better player, it may have made me sound better tone wise, but the only thing that made me a better player was practice and experience gained working with bands.
Don't quite understand your statement about tone in the hands, I believe an extremely large percentage of tone comes from the players hands/touch etc. other wise how do a lot of top players using bog standard 112's/ 400 / twins etc get a tone very few of us can emulate. Eg Mike Johnson in ShowPro room 112 DD3 --- absolutely the best tone at the Dallas show bar none .
I think if you are playing instrumentals or recording instrumentals then tone is of the utmost importance, when in a band playing back up not so much, as I have said before the average punter barely knows what a steel guitar is let alone if it has good tone. I think we are an egotistical lot, where sounding good to other steel players is more important than how the sound fits with the band, or more importantly pleasing the paying punter.
Incidentally Billy,the best Tone I heard you with was your Rittenberry through your Roland Cube --It was superb!! and I do mean that sincerely, this is not a criticism of your usual tone with the big rig , which is also good.
Ken, all things are relative, and some of our number are on low wages ,some had no pay rise for years while prices of most things have rocketed, so it is not correct to say that in general that folks have more disposable income these days,I know I don't.

[Ken Byng]

Interesting comments here.

Re the Peavey sound, I always felt that the thick, heavy mid range sound that they produce has contributed to the modern steel guitar tone. The scooped mid range of the valve amps from Fender, Standel and other manufacturers from the 1960's gave very pleasing tone, but the weakly wound pickups of the steel guitars from that era gave a thin tone. The modern humbucker-equipped pedal steels through mid-heavy solid state amps have perhaps given a uniformity of tone that makes many steel guitars sound the same. Even Peavey's Black Widow speakers are biassed in the mid range frequency, so it is refreshing that Telonics have designed speakers with scooped mids, and their amps are easier to dial out the mids than Peavey amps. I much prefer a straight forward bass, middle, treble and perhaps presence to the para mid eq system. Simpler and quicker to cut to the chase and get the sound you are looking for.

Mike Johnson's tone has been rightly held up as an exemplary model of how a steel guitar can sound, and he starts out with a full bottom end, reduced upper mid range and much reduced high end. He refuses to use an active volume pedal, and always uses a pot type pedal. On live gigs he uses an older Peavey Ltd with an Eminence speaker replacing the Black Widow which replaced the original JBL speaker. He uses an effects rack and all of his rig is designed to lean towards one thing. Warmth. He just hates thin tone, and even uses his own Shure SM57 mike when he plays on steel guitar shows.

The way that he plays does help, and he does pick in the 'sweet spot' area of the fret board. He picks very firmly, as too does Tommy White, another tone hound.

The TCA-500 has that big bottom end, and the speaker sounds great when pushed. I would be interested to hear the difference in the 12" version of the combo when I go to Dallas in March.

[Mark]

Thanks for those comments - some interesting thoughts. Les the rack idea is a thought, a mono version of the PRE-1000 + PA-4200 in a single chassis.
Mark

[Malcolm]

Mark , how about just a rack Pre1000 powered by walwart, think this might just scrape into "acceptable" price range?

[Mark]

Malcolm - the PRE-1000 is rack mountable and can be powered by a walwart - http://www.tpa-az.com/page9.htm - at the bottom of the page you can download the user manual. It is a bit cheaper than a Combo... Of course you also need a power amp and speakers to gig it...

[Malcolm]

Thanks Mark, now if we can get a "basic " model without effects etc, that might bring cost down, if you can suggest that to Dave.

[Mark]

How about this - http://www.tpa-az.com/downloads/2009_MK-I%20Manual.pdf

The LeMay Mk1 Preamp - The first version of the preamp made by Telonics in conjunction with John LeMay. Very basic, but it has a similar EQ fitted. These weren't cheap when they came out and the design was replaced by the PRE-200. Telonics did have a reasonable stock of these... in recent years they've become popular with bass players. The original version was AC powered... but I have one of these myself that Dave modified to work from a standard Telonics 24VDC power supply... I think this is now a standard mod for these units. I could ask if there's any stock of these left... Just a thought!

Mark

[Malcolm]

Mark, thanks for offer, but I seem to remember trying one of these(ZumBilly's , who else) and was not very impressed with it, did not think it was any better than what I was using at time.Reading reviews from 1000, think their must be quite a difference in performance between the two, perhaps Billy could comment.Many thanks for all the info and help you have provided, not at Dallas this year, but if I make it next year promise to buy coffee again ( might even stretch to donuts, which is more than that miserable old Roy does for me)

[Mark]

DONUTS AS WELL... Shame on you Roy... poor chap hadn't probably eaten all weekend...