"Looking" For Tone In The Wrong Places?

[David Wright]

Joe,
Very true, "We" all have a bit of different opinions on "tone" in the end, it's what Makes "You" happy, not anyone else, this is a Great Thread, and as alway many different opinions are expressed here..in the end, the only one right one is "Yourself"x

I know as a player for almost 40 years now, I have been able to get a tone that works for "ME" not always liked by others, no matter the guitar I was playing at the time. In the end, its "You" thats got to be happy..Funny, I've gotton the perfect tone for me one night, and the next night some little something is off, can't explain it but it happens, I've always liked playing outside for tone, don't know why, I fell the surroundings has a lot to do with what you sound like to your self....
Its always nice to have someone say, WOW, great tone, and all night you think is sucks!!..I know if my sound isn't what I'm looking for that night I'm way to concerned with it and my playing suffers greatly..

L@@king for tone in all the wrong places?? easy, it's all on "you' and what "you" like... and a big part of that is in "Your" HANDS!!!

[Georg Sørtun]

The right place to look for tone is ME.

Yes, yes and yes! Definitely!
However, unless your steel got the tone so it can respond to you, playing it the best you know how to may not be quite enough.

It is almost as if a pedal/lever connection is broken, you can't get the change in a certain way no matter how good you are. You can in most cases fake it though, and make those who listen be non the wiser about the instrument's shortcomings - be it tone or mechanics.
Plenty of threads touching on how certain steelers can create wonders on fairly average instruments, while some of us can't create much of anything regardless of how good the instrument is.

[Rich Peterson]

It is difficult to play an instrument that doesn't sound right to you, no matter what other people think. And the sound on stage often is quite different from what the audience hears.

In the "objective listening tests," the person listening may not be able to distinguish one steel from another, but the player does, and he will instinctively adjust his technique in response. He's looking for the tone he is comfortabel with, so he picks the string a bit differently to get it. He may not even realize that he's doing it.

And for that reason, the different steels sound alike to the listener.

[Reece Anderson]

A simple way for non-believers to hear how much difference the hands (touch) of the player makes, is to listen to someone’s tone…….. then play their guitar yourself and listen to the difference.

[Tracy Sheehan]

This happened about ten years ago and is a true story.I played with a band So.Of Fort Worth on an out door show.With out naming names the steel player in the other band had just came off the road with a very well known artist.By chance he was playing the same brand of steel i was using and the same make and model amp.When the other band took thier first break i went and talked to the steel player.I loved the tone he was getting and asked him if he would come and set my amp settings exactly the same as his.He looked at my amp and said my settings were exactly like his.I told him i don't get it as your sound is so good.He then told me he liked my tone and thought his tone sucked.
I had known for years an amp sounds different when you get away from it.You can hear more highs or lows depending on how and where you set you amp behind your self.He played on my steel for a couple of tunes by him self.We were on break.I went out front quite a ways and couldent believe how much better my amp sounded.I then played on his and we both came to the same conclusion.We were both hearing them as the audience did.Not with the amp so close to our ears.Go figure,as is often said.

[Georg Sørtun]

Tracy, your experience illustrates the effects of several phenomenas.

1: the difference between mostly direct sound heard on stage, and a mix of direct and indirect sound heard by the audience. The latter is most pleasing in most locations.

2: treble is directional, so on a distance high frequencies, like sharp-sounding high notes and overtones from a steel, sounds smoother and a lot more "chime-like" than up close.

3: a listener's equal-loudness contour changes drastically with actual sound level. We do in fact have a built-in equalizer, that determines what frequencies we are more or less sensitive to based on sound-level. Sound-level changes drastically with distance, more than we think it does since our hearing also has auto-level built in in addition to auto-eq.

Doesn't hurt to know these things before we start eq'ing our gear on stage to get "the right sound." The best way to get it right is to evaluate the sound from a distance, as heard by the audience - as you have learned.

FWIW: I always record live performances from a suitable place at least some 20-30 feet away from the stage - in the audience area, with crossed microphones lifted high enough to point down towards the stage. Usually get the best balanced and natural-sounding recordings that way, with no need for further processing.

[Donny Hinson]

It is difficult to play an instrument that doesn't sound right to you, no matter what other people think.

That's true for some players, but not for all. It's a mindset thing, and it affects some far more than others. I've seen some players get so mad they could spit if their tone wasn't exactly right. Others get it as best they can, and then go on with playing, and we're none the wiser that they're not happy. This is much the same as great athletes who get injured, and then go on and "play through the pain" with performance as good, or sometimes even more outstanding, than when they were not injured.

You either play the instrument, or you let the instrument play you.

The choice is yours.

[David Mason]

It's interesting that back when all you had were Bigsby & Fender guitars, and Fender & Standel amps, all the players sounded individualized and each person had a recognizable tone. Now you have a dozen kinds of steels and a near-infinite choice in how to amplify them, and everyone sounds alike....

[Donny Hinson]

It's called "follow the leader". Back in the late '50s, there simply was no one to pattern yourself after (outside of Speedy and Alvino, neither of who were country players). Yeah, we had Fenders, Bigsbys, and Wrights, and some marvelous tones. But we also had that after everyone stopped using fenders and Bigsbys...Remember the '60s? Weldon, Buddy, Hal, Lloyd, Pete, Curly, Tom. Everyone still had a unique tone.

Then, about 1975, everything changed.

Tones became more homogeneous and bland, probably because the "powers that be" started running sound instead of musicians. The days of the steel being a major identifier of style were, by and large, history. The only successful musicians were the ones that complied, and played oatmeal. The days of "hot steel" were gone. You can't blame the guitars or amps, for varieties of sound are still there, but no one's playing them.

A few big (read: successful) studio players adopt a similar tone...and everyone else follows. (The big players wanted to keep playing.) And the followers? Well, they were just following the few big players that were left.

[Franklin]

In the mid 70's and after, guess what changed. How we duplicate the sound of electrical instruments through chip components, digital processors, digital recording boards, computerized everything.

The way speakers, amps, and everything old sounds is mostly because they were made in the days of old technology and before the assembly line approach. Tubes powered everything from the recording console to the microphones. Outboard gear, compressors, limiters and such sounds less harsh with more definition when tubes are used. Now everything in the studio and at live steel shows is digital and/or solid state. In fact recording with tube gear provides a softer, warmer, process which allows the live sound mixer or the studio guy to shape highs, mids, and low frequencies easier without sounding brittle or muddy. A strange thing happens when you can hear all the frequencies clearly..... The sound of the instrument becomes clearly audible. Today engineers and musicians are eq'd much more than they were in the 60's because we are trying to eliminate the problems digital processing does to the overall sound. Most modern technology amps have optional eq controls for the musician instead of the basic bass, mids, and treble knobs because we need to shape the frequency of the instrument into a tolerable tone, which again is happening with modern sound technology.

When you listen to steels at these shows remember in the old days amps were the only means of hearing the instruments. They did not send instruments through a digital console and then through extremely harsh sounding front of house speakers designed for volume, not tone to deliver the sound to the audience. When considered that all steel players at the shows use the same non-tube delivery system usually through some type of digital enhancer such as a delay or profex etc. They are compounding the harsh point of the digital sound. When they try to warm it up many times the definition of the sound goes away.

So before it is assumed the instruments are the reason for the sameness remember each step of amplification is causing the digital daisy chain.
I forgot to mention the volume pot pedal. Now the trend has been to try to eliminate it from the sonic chain. Each step takes away from how the instrument actually sounds......Amplification is always a subtracting factor. Tube technology using basic pot controls on everything from the pot to the control desk offered a less intrusive reproduction. Digital changes the tone immediately and then we have to somehow find ways to get rid of its changes.
This is the real problem if anyone is trying to duplicate what they heard from another era.

Paul

[Georg Sørtun]

Paul, I agree with most of what you're saying here. The ideal sound chain is one that doesn't add anything - the straight wire model - through which the player can subtract what he/she want of the instrument's inherent sound on-the-fly by applying playing techniques and passive load.

As it is; most active SS/chip electronics available to us is in the "Cheap, Very Low Fidelity" category. They add a lot of distortion, while letting very little of the original signal survive through the chain.

IMO, the inherent sound/distortion of regular SS amp/speakers used by steelers today, are better filtered through a bale of hay than manipulated through a board's eq/filters, if the goal is to record the instrument - not the amp.

This "Sorry State of the SS and digital world" doesn't have to be like that though. The good equipment is out there, although one can not find it in music stores or at prices most musicians would feel comfortable with. The up-side is that one doesn't need much equipment - it is a simple and short sound-chain, so if the aim is to release the instrument's sound, one can achieve that even on a fairly limited budget.

It is also, IMO, a problem that people hail the "old sounds", as those were to a large degree the result of deficiencies in the old and not very good technology. Having old equipment around may be useful as references, but going back to old equipment only prevents us from going forward and look for ways to improve the new equipment.

To the degree that steels haven't been uniformed by them all being run through the "Cheap, Very Low Fidelity" sound chains for too many decades, each brand of PSG still has its very unique sound. Once a steel's output has been balanced, and all obstacles (distortion) removed from the rest of the sound-chain, each steel's unique timbre is there for us to play on. It won't sound like in "the good old days", but then again; it never did.

[b0b]

So that's why I sound like crap!

[Dan Tyack]

It is difficult to play an instrument that doesn't sound right to you, no matter what other people think.

That's true for some players, but not for all. It's a mindset thing, and it affects some far more than others. I've seen some players get so mad they could spit if their tone wasn't exactly right. Others get it as best they can, and then go on with playing, and we're none the wiser that they're not happy. This is much the same as great athletes who get injured, and then go on and "play through the pain" with performance as good, or sometimes even more outstanding, than when they were not injured.

You either play the instrument, or you let the instrument play you.

The choice is yours.

I guess I'm a wimp, because if I'm not getting any love from my instrument/amp, then I might as well go home. Of course if I'm on a gig, I'll power through, but the quality of my playing drastically improves if I've got that sound.

[Georg Sørtun]

So that's why I sound like crap!

Well, I wouldn't know

[Ron Whitworth]

I have to agree with everything that David Wright said above & I will quote what he said here

" Very true, "We" all have a bit of different opinions on "tone" in the end, it's what Makes "You" happy, not anyone else, this is a Great Thread, and as alway many different opinions are expressed here..in the end, the only one right one is "Yourself"x

I know as a player for almost 40 years now, I have been able to get a tone that works for "ME" not always liked by others, no matter the guitar I was playing at the time. In the end, its "You" thats got to be happy..Funny, I've gotton the perfect tone for me one night, and the next night some little something is off, can't explain it but it happens, I've always liked playing outside for tone, don't know why, I fell the surroundings has a lot to do with what you sound like to your self....
Its always nice to have someone say, WOW, great tone, and all night you think is sucks!!..I know if my sound isn't what I'm looking for that night I'm way to concerned with it and my playing suffers greatly..

L@@king for tone in all the wrong places?? easy, it's all on "you' and what "you" like... and a big part of that is in "Your" HANDS!!"

I think we should print this out & hang it in our practice rooms & read it each time before we sit down
I think it will help us amateurs & non - pro's all
to maybe become a little better.
Thank You David for this as I was thinking of a way to say what you said but you said it all IMHO.
Ron

[Brad Issendorf]

I guess that after last night's job, I am more of a believer that the player has most of effect on tone than ever before. We played an outdoor job and it started out in the lower 60's for a daytime high temp and steadily dropped through the night. At the beginning, I was very happy with how things were going and how I sounded. As temps dropped to the mid 40,s, my hands were getting cold and my picking was suffering from missing strings, picks slipping and so on. Sure my technique or style or ability or whatever you want to call it changed, but most notably my sound became thin and edgy, the break glass kind. And no amount of adjustment of the amp, picking further up the neck, or changing pick ups made it right. It was a long night.

[Mitch Ellis]

Paul,
In your opinion, does a tube amp (for ex. a Fender Twin w/JBL's) more closely reproduce the actual sound of the steel than a solid state amp (for ex. NV400)? If I understood your post correctly, a solid state amp, because of the technology, interferes with the signal that the pick-up is sending, where a tube amp doesn't, because of the lack of digital technology. Is that correct? How do you "eliminate the problems digital processing does to the overall sound"? Thank you,
Mitch

[Dan Tyack]

I think what Paul is talking about is way more than the amps used, it's the whole stack of recording technology that was used back in the 60s and 70s in the recording studio. That was all analog and mostly tube.

I'm not going to try to characterize what made that technology sound different from today's ProTools focused approach. It's clear that it sounded different.

On a personal note, Paul contributed tracks for two songs on my first album (Blackened Toast, available on the forum). His tone sounded nothing like what appeared on top 40 country radio at the time: it's fat and dry. I mixed it just as he gave it to me (no eq or added efx). I asked him about that at the time and he said that's what he normally delivered for recording. So if his parts on the 90s hits strike people as bright and wet, that's not Paul's fault.

[Georg Sørtun]

@ Mitch E. and others...

Simplified sound shaping characteristics on the amp side:

- When tube amp circuits reach their limits on transients, they react "like a rubber band" - stretch and bounce back while trying to draw/deliver more power in an attempt to reproduce the peaks, creating a rounded, sinusoidal, overload sound full of harmonic, mostly in phase, overtones, that by most people is perceived as "soft and musical."

- When SS amp circuits reach their limits on transients, they clip the excess signal "like a blunt knife", creating a sharp, ringing, overload sound full of non-harmonic, out of phase, overtones. Most SS circuits also introduce Transient InterModulation (TIM) distortion on the entire signal - all the time, resulting in a constant "typical transistor" sound most people find "hard and anything but musical."

Run both type of amps within their limits, and it is basically only the degree of TIM inherent to a particular amp circuit that reveals which one is Solid State and which one is tube based. TIM can be reduced to near zero, eliminating the inherent SS sound.
However, since most people want "more power" and tend to run their amps fairly close to their limits - resulting in peaks beyond the amps' limits all the time, all but the very best SS amps will reveal themselves by "hardening" the sound no matter what.

Nearly all pre-amps, buffers and effect units, are constructed, and behave like SS circuits, hence the "transistor sound."


Regarding the "digital recording" process it is mostly the fact that the noise floor is comfortably low and dynamic range high, that makes producers, technicians and musicians misuse and overuse the new possibilities and "manipulate the sound to death." Quite often they "run out of bits" at both ends, resulting in "digital clipping" both at peaks and when the signal crosses zero. "Running out of bits" means hard clipping, and that sounds "anything but musical".

The only way to make digital equipment sound natural, is to run each and every stage within its limits - all the way through the chain. Somehow I have the impression that that rarely ever happens...

The electronic stages that introduce most other forms of distortion are the analog to digital (AD) and digital to analog (DA) stages. No problem making their performance "look good on paper", but since any deviation from perfect AD/DA conversion introduces non-musical harmonics, it is hard to get rid of the audible digital distortion.

Not sure if the above helps anyone to better understanding on the subject, but there are tons and tons of technical literature to sift through for those who want to know more. Better to look there for "the tone", and filter out most of the quasi-technical voodoo while we're at it.

[Ken Byng]

I just got back from a holiday and have caught up with this very thought provoking thread.

Reece, I would to take the blindfold test when I see you next (and probably make a fool of myself in the process)

Just out of interest - you promote the visual sensory perception as affecting the way that we hear the tonal qualities of a steel guitar. Do you have a specificly coloured guitar that you personally prefer tone-wise, or are you fairly ambivalent about it. The reason why I ask is that my 3 pedal steels are brown, black and natural maple. They all sound good to my ears but the black Emmons push pull has a real sparkle and zing in the high frequencies that the other two (ShoBuds) don't. It is very distinctive to my ears, especially when I listen to it through quality headphones. That's not to say that the SB's sound bad because they certainly don't. My Pro III ShoBud with metal necks does have a slightly different tone to my Pro II with wood necks. Again that is my ears telling me that.

If I change the very top frequency controls on my Webb amp, I cannot make my ShoBuds ring on the upper registers in the way that the Emmons does quite naturally. The push-pull just seems to have an in-built organic clarity and sustain all of its own. (Timbre?)

Sorry to labour the point.

Ken

[Fred Shannon]

There are some of us 'analog' advocates who've been saying all along what Paul has eloquently described. If you think you get the true tone from a digitally chopped effect, amplifier, or any digital conditioner I believe you are seriously mistaken. I think it will be a long time coming before the engineers can make a 'chopped' signal even closely resemble what you'll get from a pure analog amplifier, chop it and filter all you want. Just my $.02 worth.
Edited to add: Maybe with a chrystal lattice filter, but the price would be out of sight.
phred

[Reece Anderson]

Ken B…..I trust you enjoyed your holiday.

You asked if the visual sensory perception affects the way we hear? Instead of using your word “affects”, I prefer the words “dominantly influences”, and my answer to that questions is……..….yes.

My personally preferred colors have always been darker green and dark wood colors. Many years ago in an interview for (I believe) Frets magazine I was asked about a white guitar, and I replied.....“to me” a white guitar did not sound good. That was a long time ago, yet today there are still those who remember my comment who ask…..were you serious?

At that time I was well into my search for the truth about the power of visual perception. Those who have been following this thread as well as others I’ve written which are similar, now know that the reason white guitars do not sound good “to me”, is because the color white negatively impacts my personal perception, which has absolutely nothing to do with the white guitar itself. Could I tell if a guitar being played was white…..of course not, no more than one can listen to a black guitar and identify the color.

When I look at white guitars I see attractive clear distinct lines, and a beautiful clean look, yet when I play a white guitar I think of words like sterile and cold. Others may perceive the same guitar as being clean and fresh looking, and if that is their perception, they will achieve their preferred tone as well as play their best. Having a guitar that fits into each person’s perception is critically important in ultimately revealing a persons true potential.

Your mentioned your black guitar, I believe black guitars could likely appeal to those who play them because it’s considered by some as a non color, which could possibly create a perception of non-interference which equates to clear focus. Those same positive visual forces, no matter what color the guitar, are being applied if one’s guitar complies to their individual perception.

I respectfully suggest there to be a possibility that the guitar you have which has the “zing” you like is non-detectable when compared to like sounding guitars and you no longer have the visual advantage.

I don’t want to provide the impression that I believe color is the dominate perception. Every person’s true and full perception is comprised of many things of which color is only one.

I appreciate your consideration that you may have felt you were laboring the point, but I can assure you I appreciate and respect your comments. When pursuing the truth about something as important as this is to steel guitar and those who play them, I would personally hope no one ever truly considers pursuit of the truth to be belaboring.

Thank you again for your comments………………….

[Billy Carr]

I like the way Reese mentioned the white and black guitars. I've thought this for many years. I feel comfortable with a guitar that is usually in the blue color family, so to speak. Rosewood appeals also, as does black. One color I want to get on a guitar in the future is empire mahogony. I also agree with the "hands" thing that's been mentioned. Very good topic here!

[David Mason]

Well, there is a lot of processing of sensory signals before they are allowed to pass to the judgment centers of the brain - we have evolved all sorts of filtering mechanisms so that when a tiger jumps out of the bushes, you're already running by the time you think "a tiger just jumped out of that bush." If our brains didn't have some filtering of everything coming in, it would be akin to insanity, or an infant's perception - good thing that LSD wore off, huh?

I'm not sure most evolutionary psychologists or biologists would say that the sense of hearing runs through the ocular filters, but you're going to see the guitar first in most cases, and prejudge. Then you'll hear what you expect to hear. It would be fun (strictly scientific, of course) to put on lab coats & pick up some clipboards, then put a blindfold on Reese and have Paul play some licks through a white guitar for a while - then take Reese's blindfold off.... Would it then start sounding cold & sterile, post-exposure?

(By the by, your sense of smell is wired much closer to your brain with less filtering, because of accidental, mammalian-heritage reasons. Which is why a whiff of floorwax will make you thing "cat urine", a little soap residue on your stove burner will make you think "whiskey" etc. - the initial processing is less effective.)

[Reece Anderson]

David M.....Let me hear most anything Paul plays on any color guitar, and I will tell you it sounds uniquely like Paul. We are all blessed with our personal musical fingerprints.