Sweetened tunings. Why such an issue for pedal steel?

[henry]

I know this has been discussed plenty, and I think I understand the problem.

What I don't understand is why this doesn't affect other instruments, or at least doesnt' seem to be such a problem for other instruments.

The guitar for example, if you're playing an open E chord, the B string is a 5th, if you're playing a G then the B is a 3rd. The B can't be in tune in both contexts.
(Correct me if I'm wrong!!)
But guitar players dont have sweetened tunings and strobo tuners and the rest.

I read one post on the US forum saying this was because you dont get the sustained chords on the guitar like you do on pedal steel so it was less of a problem.

But wouldn't keyboards and pianos be just as affected?

Yours, out of tune but for much less intellectual reasons,

Henry

[Zebedee]

Guitars suffer with the same problem.
One company, Earvana, make compensated nuts to improve how 'in tune' the guitar is.

http://www.earvana.com/

[Ken Byng]

.................But wouldn't keyboards and pianos be just as affected?

Yours, out of tune but for much less intellectual reasons,

Henry

If acoustic pianos were tuned perfectly to a non-sweetened tuner, it would sound horrendously out of tune with itself. That is why a piano tuner's ear is the failsafe method. He / she will tune the notes to unequal temperaments that will sound pretty well in tune with each other.

For instance, the F# strings on the E9 tuning sound slightly sharp when the A&B pedals are pressed. The F notes when the A pedal and F lever are played will sound sharp if they are not flattened significantly. The SE9 sweetened setting on a Peterson tuner will sound pretty well in tune. The story goes that Jeff Newman got Lloyd Green to tune his guitar as 'in-tune' as he could get it. He then used a Peterson tuner to save each note - both open and pedalled - and saved the settings to the now commonly used sweetened SE9 setting on the Peterson tuner.

The USA steel forum has dozens of lengthy threads on this very topic, and it is just about done to death over there. It is still an interesting subject though.

[Tony Smart]

Anyone know the numbers in Hertz for these Peterson tunings? C6 as well if possible.
I take it they aren't the same as Jeff's own, if Lloyd did them.

Tony, I'm sure if you look on peterson website, there are manuals for the stroboflip and other models available to download. they have the sweetened settings in the back of them.

[Tony Russell Davis]

....But guitar players dont have sweetened tunings and strobo tuners and the rest......

We "sweeten" because we can. You don't have to, but there is a trade off as below and some ears are better at discerning the effect. Here goes
On steel guitar each note you play in a chord is related harmonically to the other notes at the same fret. The bar replicates the nut and we tune each note of the open tuning with reference to the tonic note at the nut (e.g. C in C6th, E in E9th). Thus:- play a Cmaj chord somewhere up the neck and the E and the G will be the perfect intervals of third and fifth to your tonic (C) so long as the 3rd and 5th are "perfect" in the open tuning. Chords at every other fret have the same characteristic of being related to the tonic at that fret.

On standard guitar, chords are formed by placing fingers at different frets on different strings, so there is no relationship to the intervals at the open tuning; you aren't replicating a straight barre like the nut does. Therefore you don't get perfect 3rds and 5ths everywhere and need to compromise on each tone of the scale. All instruments where you cannot control the intonation, like piano, need this compromise if they are to play in many keys.

An example, the "true" note F# (7th in the scale of Gmaj and found in other "#" key signatures) is noticeably sharper to the ear than the "true" note Gb (needed in the key of Db, so unlikely to bother us much). Since one piano key, concertina button, guitar fret, harp string etc. has to do the job of both notes, the pitch is tuned half way between - i.e. Gb slightly sharp, equalling F# slightly flat; but not spot-on for either. All other notes on the keyboard, because each will need to sound ok in different keys, are a similar half-way compromise.

[henry]

thanks everyone!

Tony F# is a particular problem for me! (I realise you were using it just as an example), but to get my top F# string sounding in tune with my B raised to C# (giving a 4th), as well as sounding in tune tune as a 5th against the open B. I just go round in circles adjusting things..!

All instruments where you cannot control the intonation, like piano, need this compromise if they are to play in many keys.

Do people notice this listening to other instruments? I dont think I do but I only really listen out for it on pedal steel..

[SteelieAJK]

To degree I find the issue on standard guitar tuning with the B string. When I played with my cajun band we mostly played in keys G & C. The B needed tweaking from straight-up tuned ET of an electronic tuner in order to sound sweet and be 'in' with the fiddle. If I then played in E, it would need to tweak the B back to sound in tune to my ear.

F# is clearly an issue on E9 with the two different offsets in the Newman & Emmons charts.

[Ken Byng]

............Tony F# is a particular problem for me!.......

I was first made aware of this problem when Reece Anderson was at my house back in the 1970's. I said to him that I didn't get temperament tuning, and he asked me to tune my E9 neck by ear. Once I had done so, he asked me to play strings 8,6,5 & 4 with pedals A & B pressed, and while they were ringing to pick the 1st string (F#). It sounded as sharp as hell. Reece's method to combat this problem was to bump the F# string down a fraction when the A&B pedals are pressed with an additional pull rod. It works!!

I have put this pull on a number of my guitars, and also put an extra pull on all of my guitars to raise the 6th plain G# string with my A pedal just enough to compensate for body flex.

The things we have to go through to make this cursed instrument sound 'reasonably' in-tune.

[Tony Russell Davis]

Henry - Bearing in mind that pedals A+B turn an E chord into an A chord, here's the thing with F# and Ken's post illustrates exactly. It's a bit simplistic, for which I apologise, but there will be some guys reading this out there in forumland that didn't know or have forgotten.

F# is the 2nd degree of a scale of Emaj. In a chord it is usually played in the second octave so we call it "9th" rather than "2nd" (7+2=9 - and there's your E9th)!
But that same F# with pedals A+B becomes the 6th in the scale of Amaj. Now, the 6th in a chord makes more of an impression than a 9th does. The 9th is usually accompanied by a bunch of other notes including the 7th, so it's fairly well concealed in a chord (it's more often a passing note anyway and not usually be sounded against a chord). The 6th is the forth note added to a "major triad" (which is a basic, no-frills, "listen-to-me chord", in this case A C# E) to make a "6th chord" (A C# E+F#) and any alteration in pitch, however caused, will scream at your ears.
I can't find my chart right now, but seem to remember that (using a Boss chromatic tuner) my G#s were tuned 4 cents flat and the F#s 2 cents flat. 2nd and 9th strings were 1 cent flat, Es and Bs were spot-on 440. Whatever the numbers, they were certainly tuned FLAT to compensate to some extent as I don't have the compensator rods.