Nasty Overtone From Steel - ?

John Mather · From: United Kingdom

Hi everyone, I'm hoping someone can help me out here, I've got a bit of a head-scratcher.

My steel seems to be making a nasty deep sort of overtone when I play with any volume - here is an example:

https://vocaroo.com/1mpunaN0rcHb

That is the guitar into a Neural Quad Cortex amp modeller I've been using which I had thought might be the source of the problem - I've had a long exchange with them trying to fix this - but it seems to happen regardless of the signal chain. I just bought a Peavey Nashville 112 and that ugly noise is still there.

I even switched out the pickup - the current one is a Wilde LxR-16 - to no avail.

Does anyone have any idea what is happening here? Thanks for your help.

Donny Hinson · From: Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.

I don't know anything about your modeler. I avoid those things because (unless I'm mistaken), they're all designed for straight guitar, not pedal steel.

That said, what kind of volume pedal are you using? (Overdriving can cause artifacts other than typical overdrive-distortion.) The clip sounds like there's a noise-gate opeating, and there also seems to be some compression? Do you get the same sound with the volume pedal straight into the amp?

John Mather · From: United Kingdom

That example is straight into the modeller with no volume pedal.

There are steel players getting great results with that unit which is why I was disappointed with it initially. That sound is still there though when I go steel > Goodrich 120 > NV112. I'm not in front of the instrument again until Thursday morning but I'll try to make some other examples with different gear to narrow things down. Thanks for your help.
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1972 Sho-Bud Professional

James Holland · From: Alabama, USA

Sounds familiar, if its worse up the neck. I believe its a form of harmonic distortion, IMD, etc. Try these:

#1 Amp was in need of service, after a visit to the shop, it was much improved, and manageable.

#2 The second cause for me, is too much preamp gain, regardless of master gain. Your modeller may be increasing an already hot signal, and/or you are running the pre- gain too high?

#3 Amp doesnt have enough clean headroom before distortion emerges. You can try to maximize the gain by adjusting the EQ, reduce the bass, roll of the highs, etc. Otherwise, you need more power.

John Mather · From: United Kingdom

That's interesting, 'harmonic distortion' does sound like it could be the right term as the offending sound is consonant with what I'm playing.

I've adjusted every gain stage and the impedance on the modeller with no improvement, I'll try playing more through some different (real) amps in the coming days and share the results. If I can't crack this thing I might find a local tech to show my whole setup to and try to diagnose the issue. Thanks for your input.
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1972 Sho-Bud Professional

Fred Treece · From: California, USA

Try a different cable? Try a different instrument, too. Preferably another steel.

James Holland · From: Alabama, USA

I just looked up the resistance of your pickup, around 29k ohms. My George L is around 19k ohms. My guitars run around 8-10k. Id say, you've got a hot signal, overdriving your preamp. You might look up your input impedance for your modeller, and see what it wants to see as an input. It might be less compatable with your steel. If so, you could look at an impedance matching device between your guitar and modeller.

John Mather · From: United Kingdom

Thank you for the suggestions. I had never come across an impedance matcher before but if it comes to it I will definitely give that a shot. It is certainly a hot pickup (I'm measuring it at 20.6 kΩ) but it is still behaving strangely when I coil split (10.3 kΩ). If I have the pre-gain on the NV112 any higher than 1 I get that strange harmonic distortion, which doesn't seem normal.

I'm picking up another steel over the weekend to conduct some tests and try to get to the bottom of this.

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