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When turning with a Peterson tuner, what do you recommend?
Use the MA9 preset and spend the time you saved practicing!
26%
 26%  [ 5 ]
Use a different preset and spend the time you saved practicing!
42%
 42%  [ 8 ]
Create your own preset based on your guitar.
31%
 31%  [ 6 ]
Total Votes : 19

Author Topic:  Wilderness guide for Peterson tuner?
Nathan Eikelberg

 

From:
Boise, Idaho, USA
Post  Posted 22 Nov 2022 4:25 pm    
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Whenever the topic of tuners comes up (particularly when involving a Peterson tuner) the responses generally fall into one of a few buckets: (a) love my Peterson and the sweetened tunings! (B) I have a BOSS Tu-2, never saw the need to waste my money on a Peterson. (C) I tune by ear. (which is invariably followed by an extended thread about how you are out of tune and aren't perceptive enough to know it until someone chimes in about how all the old greats tuned by ear and "sound fine to me"). All great opinions and I fear I'm opening up the same can of worms here!

One thing that I've read over and over again is that the Peterson presets are useless because they don't take into account the particular characteristics of your guitar with the—only somewhat useful—recommendation to "just tune the beats out and make your own preset!" This sounds like a great idea – if only I knew how to do that. That leaves me with two questions (and keep in mind I'm new to pedal steel): (1) There can sometimes be an over-exaggeration of one's perceived perceptibility (I've noticed a similar effect in the worlds of coffee, wine, etc. in which a prized collection of wine is found to be a fraud): Should I just use the MA9 preset and move on with life? (2) If indeed there is a measurable advantage to making your own preset, has anyone put together a comprehensive walkthrough on how to do that (similar to the Wilderness Guide by John Lacey)?
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Tucker Jackson

 

From:
Portland, Oregon, USA
Post  Posted 22 Nov 2022 4:42 pm    
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Hi, Nathan. I may be one of those people you referred to when you said you've read people say the "Peterson presets are useless" because I tend to comment on tuning threads.

Actually, I've never read a statement that strong on the forum by anyone. Just that one can sometimes get a little better sound by customizing their tuning for each steel guitar they have.

As one-size-fits-all tuning charts go, the Peterson sweetner based on Jeff Newman's chart is pretty darn good (I'm not sure if it's MA9 or what it's called in Peterson-speak, but some of those users will chime in here).

My advice: if you are new to steel and tuning by ear is challenging, try a Peterson sweetener if you have that tuner. Or just use the Newman chart (just need a tuner that has a hertz or cents reading for that one). For many people, this works just fine.

The Newman chart is what I started it out and was happy with it. After several years, my ear developed and could hear a couple of outages that I hadn't paid attention to before, so learned how to adjust for those (without screwing up something else within the tuning). We're talking very small differences in pitch here... and to further "right-size" this entire tuning issue, the tuning system you end up using is 10% of it, while skilled bar placement accounts for 90% of the sweet, in-tune sound that comes out of your amp. As a newbie, grab any reasonable tuning system and start working on making it sound in tune with bar placement. Later, you can nit-pick and refine your tuning system - and I'll probably be here to help you with that project. Smile
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Jeremy King


From:
Rochelle, GA, USA
Post  Posted 22 Nov 2022 5:50 pm    
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I’m a big fan of the Sid Hudson tuning preset. But there are multiple good options on the Peterson tuners from the factory and on the user trading post.

I tried a bunch of presets and eventually settled on the SH9. It sounded the most in tune to me on my particular steel. From that point I stopped thinking about the sweeteners and really began focusing on playing in tune with that sweetener. Over time, you learn to compensate/adjust for those occasions where the sweetened tuning doesn’t agree with your particular steel. My ear has developed enough (nowhere close to where I’d like it to be) to notice when things are not in tune. So yeah my advice would be find a preset and stick with it and learn to play in tune with that sweetener. Your ear will develop overtime and you can eventually make adjustments where you see fit. There are guys on here that are way more knowledgeable about these kind of things than I am. Just a few years ago I was in the same boat as you learning about these tunings and wanted to share some things that helped me.

Also, Travis Toy has a good video on his tutorials site about tuning by ear if you want to go that route. I think he shows you how to program your settings too.
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Bengt Erlandsen

 

From:
Brekstad, NORWAY
Post  Posted 22 Nov 2022 11:23 pm    
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I use neither of those 3 options. I have a Peterson VS-II that I use manually as it shows how many cents I am away ET. I find that a lot easier than to use a preset. I do know how much I want any of the notes to be offset from ET tho.


B.Erlandsen
Zumsteel S12extE9 7+7
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Benjamin Poilve

 

From:
France
Post  Posted 23 Nov 2022 12:00 am    
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As a new players as well, MA9 is a life saver.

One thing to take into account is that tuning a pedal steel "by hear" is not as simple as tuning the beats out. If you do that, you will sound great by yourself but will be out of tune with the band. You have to make compromise between just and temperate tuning. Were "the great" able to make such compromise by hear and sound good? Yeah! Can I, especially in a noisy environment? No.

So MA9 it is, it consistently sounds good. Only slight disagreement would be the first string, much too sharp for my ear.

If you want a procedure for "tuning the beats out" it is described in the annex of Winnie Winston's book. I can give you a copy in the DM.
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Jack Stoner


From:
Kansas City, MO
Post  Posted 23 Nov 2022 3:20 am    
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I use the Newman Sweetened (SE9 for E9th opens). Actually I have my own "JE9" which is the SE9 and the pedals/knees combined into one.
Works for me. Years ago I tuned straight up with a tuner and people kept telling me I was out of tune, I got the Newman chart and started tuning with that and no one ever told me I was out of tune.

I've used it on a D-10 Franklin and several GFI's including an Expo S-10, Ultra D-10 and my current Ultra SD-10.
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Bill Duncan


From:
Lenoir, North Carolina, USA
Post  Posted 23 Nov 2022 3:40 am    
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Jack Stoner wrote:
I use the Newman Sweetened (SE9 for E9th opens). Actually I have my own "JE9" which is the SE9 and the pedals/knees combined into one.
Works for me. Years ago I tuned straight up with a tuner and people kept telling me I was out of tune, I got the Newman chart and started tuning with that and no one ever told me I was out of tune.

I've used it on a D-10 Franklin and several GFI's including an Expo S-10, Ultra D-10 and my current Ultra SD-10.


I am with Jack. I struggled with tuning when I got my first pedal steel in the 70s. Then I found Jeff Newman and he showed me how. I still use it and have incorporated other levers to it. It still works for me too.
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Dave Grafe


From:
Hudson River Valley NY
Post  Posted 23 Nov 2022 6:58 am    
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Jack Stoner wrote:
I use the Newman Sweetened (SE9 for E9th opens). Actually I have my own "JE9" which is the SE9 and the pedals/knees combined into one.
Works for me. Years ago I tuned straight up with a tuner and people kept telling me I was out of tune, I got the Newman chart and started tuning with that and no one ever told me I was out of tune.

I've used it on a D-10 Franklin and several GFI's including an Expo S-10, Ultra D-10 and my current Ultra SD-10.


Ditto
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Fred Treece


From:
California, USA
Post  Posted 23 Nov 2022 5:30 pm    
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I agree with Jack and Dave. Start with SE9+SP9 (that’s how they’re listed in Strobosoft for iPad - What is MA9?).

No tuning method will work for every guitar, even if you have perfect pitch and can tune by ear. SOMETHING will be out of tune somewhere along the neck.

Likely as not, eventually you will find your own tuning for your own guitar. But you have to have a starting point, and SE9 works well enough on most E9 necks. Just use it and....get on with practicing 😎
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Benjamin Poilve

 

From:
France
Post  Posted 24 Nov 2022 12:16 am    
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Quote:
What is MA9?


MA9 is a "user preset" shared on the Peterson website, by Jody Cameron and Mickey Adams.

It is described by Mickey Adams as :

Quote:

The MA9 tuning is a modified 440 Es based sweetener.
Major 3rd interval beats are minimized on many triads using strings 2 and 7. A compensator on the A pedal, lowering 1/7 to -13 further enhances the tuning as well...Glad you guys like it!...


It is the most popular preset on the Peterson website.

A thread on the subject : https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=339614&sid=80e828be86644b5fedc55099c20185bb
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Fred Treece


From:
California, USA
Post  Posted 24 Nov 2022 7:41 am    
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Thanks, Benjamin.
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Asa Brosius

 

Post  Posted 24 Nov 2022 8:58 am    
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My experience-every guitar will stay in and go out in its own way, pick any tuner with a good display and spend some time with it, definitely learn to tune by ear, practice with a drone, pay a little more attention to the advice given by working professional players than the rest, and if you're playing live get comfortable with a silent visual tuner.
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Andrew Frost


From:
Toronto, Ontario
Post  Posted 25 Nov 2022 11:18 am    
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You're asking a good question...
Personally I feel that 'all roads lead to Rome' and if you spend enough time with your instrument and working on it, and asking questions like this you'll figure it out.
Everyone has a different way of going about it.
The thing with pedal steel is that we can actually sound more 'in tune' than guitars and pianos, and in my view, that's a big part of our job - to really sweeten the sound of a record or ensemble.
For what its worth, and its just my approach, but I look at tuning in terms of the most common chord voicings that are played, and tweaking the parts of each chord voicing to be pleasant and functional. So on E9, its getting the E triads, the pedals down A6, the B6/B7, the C#/C#7 and the D/D6/Dmaj7 chord groupings to all sound good.
Whether you use a Peterson or not, you should understand why you are altering tuning from straight up/ET.
Your ears will tell you that stuff eventually, and it will generally correspond with the basic principles of Just Intonation, so getting familiar with JI basics, and nuances of sound and harmony, is absolutely time well spent, if not essential if you want to understand what's going on with your instrument.
Its the the same stuff that applies to string, horn and vocal sections...
Personally, I have my own offsets programmed into a strobe tuner that's usually on a pedal board, but sometimes I just use a hand held Korg tuner and adjust the hz reading for each change. The Strobe tuner is a definite time saver though, and that's why I use it.
I agree with your implication that making music is the priority, and that we can get caught in the weeds with tuning technicalities. However, I'd recommend spending a bit of time getting basically acquainted with how Just Intonation works, (google/wiki etc) as it will save you time down the road in figuring out pitchy issues and problems and it will also deepen your understanding of your instrument and music in general.
Good luck!
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Nathan Eikelberg

 

From:
Boise, Idaho, USA
Post  Posted 25 Nov 2022 5:23 pm    
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Thanks to everyone who took the time to chime in. I definitely appreciate the comments.

Tucker Jackson wrote:
Hi, Nathan. I may be one of those people you referred to when you said you've read people say the "Peterson presets are useless" because I tend to comment on tuning threads.

Haha, as they say before a movie, "Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental". Definitely no finger pointing intended! In all honesty, I think there's so much content on the forum, for a newbie I find it difficult to separate out the time-tested advice from opinions that might be less so. Similar to when I learned woodworking and was taught by a former piano maker and furniture maker – It's one thing to learn woodworking tips from a YouTube channel, another thing entirely to learn from a master of the craft.

Jack, Bill, Dave, Fred, et al – I've re-tuned using the Newman presets and I'll give that a try for a while.

Benjamin Poilve wrote:
If you want a procedure for "tuning the beats out" it is described in the annex of Winnie Winston's book.

Thanks for the heads up – I've got the book, but haven't made it that far into it yet. I'll take a look though.

Andrew Frost wrote:
I agree with your implication that making music is the priority, and that we can get caught in the weeds with tuning technicalities. However, I'd recommend spending a bit of time getting basically acquainted with how Just Intonation works, (google/wiki etc) as it will save you time down the road in figuring out pitchy issues and problems and it will also deepen your understanding of your instrument and music in general.
Good luck!
Any specific resources you recommend? I've got the classic pedal steel books as well as a few white papers I've pick up here and there (including Tom Bradshaw's "Tuning Tips & Tuners"), but admittedly need to spend more time with them.
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Andrew Frost


From:
Toronto, Ontario
Post  Posted 26 Nov 2022 9:06 am    
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Quote:
Any specific resources you recommend? I've got the classic pedal steel books as well as a few white papers I've pick up here and there (including Tom Bradshaw's "Tuning Tips & Tuners"), but admittedly need to spend more time with them.


Glad you're making progress with it. A simple google search will get you started with this stuff, but in a practical/useable sense, it really boils down to key centres and the relationship of the diatonic pitches within each key centre. That just means the regular notes inside each key... So when you're tuning up the open strings on E9, for example, you're going to be thinking more or less about E major. When you tune up the A chords with pedals down, you're thinking about the world of A major, etc.

Each key centre has the same, parallel logic, that looks something like this...

Tab:

    Scale Tone      Offset in cents from ET

              1                  -0-
              2/9                +4
             maj3               -14
              P4                  -2
              P5                  +2
             maj6/13             -16
             maj7                -12


You don't have to adhere strictly to this, and with some experimentation and use of your ear, trial and error etc, you might find a system that leans closer to this or perhaps closer to ET... And this applies to your playing/intonation of course too.

So in a practical sense, using this approach to tune your open triad strings, you'll end up with G#s that are about -14cents lower than your Es, and Bs that are a touch sharper around +2cents.
With pedals down, in the A major world, your 3rds(C#) will be about -14 cents lower than the As, and the 5ths ( Es ) will sit a couple cents higher than the root notes.

You can use this approach to tune the A+Flever chord (C#) as well as the Es lowered chord (B/B6) and the string 9 D intervals as well, more or less.

These are basically the same numbers you would arrive at if you tuned up using pure harmonics, with any given root note as a starting point. This is not unique to steel guitar, but we are able to incorporate this stuff more smoothly and naturally than fixed pitch instruments, because we can shift the centre of the chord with the left hand.

There are some issues you'll run into, as not every interval will line up logically the same way Equal Temperament allows, ( F#s for example! ) and things like cab drop can make the process a bit complex, so you will likely end up with your own approach, but there many resources and helpful perspectives in other threads about that stuff.
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