The British Steelies Society

Many of you members seem to get a beautiful tone from steels of all makes and models.
Iam struggling to get my steels to 'sing'. What's the secret.?

I play a Bennett s10 and an MSA Red Baron and love them both. I know they are not top dollar, but I really like them and I'm not a premier league player.

I plug into an ibanez compressor pedal and a boss delay and into a fender valve Princeton, using the cleanest setting.

My steels sound more 'guitary' than 'steely' if you see what I mean.

Could be my technique of course.

Ps. Went to see first aid kit at Newcastle City hall - fantastic steel playing going on.

Martyn.

Hi Martyn, for what it's worth, my settings are on a Fender Frontman 212R Vol to suite, Bass 3/4 , mid 11 o'clock, treble 11 o/clock.
I have a Beheringer Delay set on MODE 500, the delay is 4 beats at a count medium speed 1.2.3.4. reverb this is an EMMONS setting on the beats and reverb according to where you are playing, just a little at first then tune to taste as the gig fills up, I also use a Sho Bud pedal, had it for the past 40 years, being analogy it gives a warmer sound, well, I think so.
As you know, all steel players have there own settings, mine allows the bottom end strings to come throe as loud as the top end.
If you find the top end too like a guitar take some of the treble off, and try to keep the middle down a bit, on mine it makes the sound a bit woolly.
I'm sure your going to get load's of help on this subject because we all have out own way of setting up, it's just a matter of taking your time and tweaking until you feel it's about right, and if you have a couple of steel's then the sound is going to change when you swap instruments.
I have some tracks of a time when I played with Frisco back in 71, sounded like a whaling tart,(sorry ladies) it's just a matter of time and tweaking mate, it will come.

Get rid of the compressor pedal, for a start.

I don't know anything about Fender Princeton amps, so I am presuming it is aimed at guitar players.

I've always used solid-state amps (Peavey Session 500, Peavey Vegas), so can't advise on any settings for a valve amp, other than to put it back in its box and get a solid-state amp with a 15 inch speaker.

I've lately been getting an acceptable tone (through headphones) by plugging my steel into a passive volume pedal, then into a Line6 Pod X3, then into my computer.
Of course, this method is only any good for home use, and would be useless for live work.

Thanks!

Really appreciate this. Yes, I think (hope) I will get a few responses and I know they will all be helpful.

I dare say that right and left hand technique are the real secrets to success. I'm not a fan of bluesy bottleneck stuff, so I get slightly annoyed with myself if my steel sounds bluesy. Again, I think I probably need to develop my technique more.

Cheers,

Martyn.

Ah. The compressor pedal. This is a hard habit to break and I have been using this old 70s pedal for years with my tele. I got into the habit of plugging my steels into it as well but I know, secretly, that it has an effect on the tone. I've been exposed!
Thanks for the feedback, I'm taking it on board.

I think it's easy to spend hours of time adjusting eq and trying out different amps and effects, but if you have a clean sound with a reasonable balance then there's nothing to stop you getting a good steel sound.

IMHO the real gains will be made in:

- getting a consistently clean and positive sound from your picking,
- developing your vibrato so you have a good range of both speed and depth (and being able to go smoothly between)
- volume pedal usage both to soften the pick attack, and to swell

the interaction between the swells and the vibrato is fertile ground. then when you get pedal changes and slides in the mix too

this guy illustrates the point well on his theremin


re. Valve and transistor amps
Tranny amps will compress less, so when you give it some with your volume pedal the amp gets louder correspondingly.
Valve amps compress a bit so wont respond quite as much, and will eventually break up (in a way that guitarists love but that frustrates steel players)
I use a valve amp for gigs at the mo and find that it is ok providing I have it set with a lot of headroom, it still compresses but I think the rich valvey sound suits what we play.
(btw I dont want to seem to be contradicting Richard who gets and awesome tone out of his tranny amps, but I bet he'd sound just as good through a twin!)

This is my Fender 75 in action (not sayin' I can *do* what I'm recommending! but it's a pedal steel through a valve amp..):

Once again. Thanks a lot for your top tips. It's great to get advice from you folks. I'm going to fiddle about with my set up but am mindful not to get too distracted from the main agenda.......................practice.

Unless I've missed the mention, I don't believe that the main question has been asked: Do you plug these effects in after the guitar and BEFORE the Volume pedal, or after the volume pedal.
They MUST be connected before the pedal with dynamics controllers and after with reverb/deleay etc to get the optimum signal to noise ratio and maximum efficiency of the effect.

I go from guitar to volume pedal to compressor to delay to amp. Reverb is in the amp. Should I have the volume pedal last?
Maybe I need to get shot of the compressor - I understand that a compressor can negate the impact of the volume pedal to some extent, so maybe I need to get used to improving my volume pedal technique.

Thanks again all.