Lap steel players... please help.

[two fingers]

Gym membership! Ear plugs!

Yeah.... but you think it will sound good?

 

[mexicanyella]

TF, I've never tried a Super Twin; just read about them. From what I've read, they're all about loud, clean and linear...not crank-it-and-wail power stage excitement. I like clean steel, so I bet I could find a sound I like in that big ol thing. But it's big, heavy and has a power tube sextet in it, which costs some money to replace whenever the time comes. If you're thinking "loud clean amp, use pedals for dirt" anyway, I'd also urge you to try the steel through a Peavey Bandit, Special, etc. Loud, clean 112 combos that are cheap on Craigslist, durable, pretty much maintenance free and, if you do like the clean countryish thing, they have great-sounding punchy clean channels. No retubing, much lighter, etc.

There are lots of big, heavy, high-powered Peavey combos with Black Widows in them that are great for steel or country guitar too. But if I were you, with music background but just starting out on steel, I'd be trying everything and getting my own "steel tone ears" calibrated. Try it through a Pignose. Try it through a Peavey 5150 head. Try it through a Vox Pathfinder. An SVT head plugged into two 810Es. Something will stand out as your favorite before long, and maybe the Supertwin will be that favorite, maybe not.

 

[two fingers]

TF, I've never tried a Super Twin; just read about them. From what I've read, they're all about loud, clean and linear...not crank-it-and-wail power stage excitement. I like clean steel, so I bet I could find a sound I like in that big ol thing. But it's big, heavy and has a power tube sextet in it, which costs some money to replace whenever the time comes. If you're thinking "loud clean amp, use pedals for dirt" anyway, I'd also urge you to try the steel through a Peavey Bandit, Special, etc. Loud, clean 112 combos that are cheap on Craigslist, durable, pretty much maintenance free and, if you do like the clean countryish thing, they have great-sounding punchy clean channels. No retubing, much lighter, etc.

There are lots of big, heavy, high-powered Peavey combos with Black Widows in them that are great for steel or country guitar too. But if I were you, with music background but just starting out on steel, I'd be trying everything and getting my own "steel tone ears" calibrated. Try it through a Pignose. Try it through a Peavey 5150 head. Try it through a Vox Pathfinder. An SVT head plugged into two 810Es. Something will stand out as your favorite before long, and maybe the Supertwin will be that favorite, maybe not.

Yeah great advice. With all things bass I am very methodical, patient and analytical. I need to cool the engines and be that way with lap steel too.

I'm like a kid that just wants to crank it loud and start to "myeer myeer myeer" on 11 and bug the neighbors.

 

[mexicanyella]

One thing you might try is to borrow a Line 6 Pod or something similar while you're figuring the steel out. That way you can get a feel for how your developing playing approach and instrument sound to you through different sorts of "amps" and "speakers."

The potential downside that I see here is that you might also disappear down the parameter-tweaking rabbit hole and delay actually learning to play the steel. Developing your hand ability is a big part of it, which I'm sure won't be surprising to you if you play bass, but the steepness of that learning curve might be discouraging for awhile.

A Pod set to "manual" is actually a pretty knob-oriented device, though, so if you could get your hands on one for a weekend it might point you in a general direction. It might give you early indication that you really don't like playing steel through a Soldano head and Marshall 4 x 12 or a Roland JC-120. Boom, you've just eliminated a couple of Craigslist ads from consideration, just like that.

Thanks, Line 6!

 

[two fingers]

One thing you might try is to borrow a Line 6 Pod or something similar while you're figuring the steel out. That way you can get a feel for how your developing playing approach and instrument sound to you through different sorts of "amps" and "speakers."

The potential downside that I see here is that you might also disappear down the parameter-tweaking rabbit hole and delay actually learning to play the steel. Developing your hand ability is a big part of it, which I'm sure won't be surprising to you if you play bass, but the steepness of that learning curve might be discouraging for awhile.

A Pod set to "manual" is actually a pretty knob-oriented device, though, so if you could get your hands on one for a weekend it might point you in a general direction. It might give you early indication that you really don't like playing steel through a Soldano head and Marshall 4 x 12 or a Roland JC-120. Boom, you've just eliminated a couple of Craigslist ads from consideration, just like that.

Thanks, Line 6!

Yeah I had a bass kidney bean Line 6 years ago. It really is a tweaker's delight.

 

[Rich Fiscus]

TF, I've never tried a Super Twin; just read about them. From what I've read, they're all about loud, clean and linear...not crank-it-and-wail power stage excitement. I like clean steel, so I bet I could find a sound I like in that big ol thing. But it's big, heavy and has a power tube sextet in it, which costs some money to replace whenever the time comes. If you're thinking "loud clean amp, use pedals for dirt" anyway, I'd also urge you to try the steel through a Peavey Bandit, Special, etc. Loud, clean 112 combos that are cheap on Craigslist, durable, pretty much maintenance free and, if you do like the clean countryish thing, they have great-sounding punchy clean channels. No retubing, much lighter, etc.

Our steel player prefers lower wattage amps for lap steel and high wattage for pedal steel. I think pedal steel needs something more akin to a keyboard amp to produce all those sustained harmonics. He uses a Peavey 115 that runs something like 250 watts.

He also has some kind of hot rodded Twin - not a Super Twin, but very similar and the same wattage. He thought it was too loud for pedal steel, and wouldn't even try it with lap steel.

It does, however, make a glorious bass amp! I used it at rehearsal once, into one of my 210AV cabs.

There are lots of big, heavy, high-powered Peavey combos with Black Widows in them that are great for steel or country guitar too. But if I were you, with music background but just starting out on steel, I'd be trying everything and getting my own "steel tone ears" calibrated. Try it through a Pignose. Try it through a Peavey 5150 head. Try it through a Vox Pathfinder. An SVT head plugged into two 810Es. Something will stand out as your favorite before long, and maybe the Supertwin will be that favorite, maybe not.

Our guy is still trying new and interesting gear after more than 40 years. Currently, Larry is using a Quilter Micro Block and a reverb pedal. The first time he used it, he didn't have the reverb, and it was a little too sterile. He does also use some drive from time to time, but not so much for actual lap steel sounds. He plays a lot of straight rhythm guitar on it, and you wouldn't have any idea he was playing a steel without looking.

Recently, he decided to try out a 112 cabinet he bought used through the Steel Guitar Forum. I don't remember the brand, but it has the best dispersion of any guitar cab I've ever heard. I haven't gotten a close look at it, and we haven't rehearsed since then, but it looked like the baffle was just barely scalloped.

Whatever engineering voodoo was used, that cab on the floor covers both the stage and the room more evenly than his Mesa 112 did on a stand, and at a more reasonable volume. He has 2 of them, but they're 4 Ohms, so he has to use a serial cable to push both of them with the Quilter. He had one made, but I don't see him using more than 1 cab very often.

 

[mexicanyella]

I'd like to know more about that 112 cab/cabs if you find out about it; it sounds interesting and I'd like to know the box configuration and what driver it has in it. Sounds like it was a good purchase!

I talked to a CL seller a few years ago who was selling an interesting pedal steel rig: two Peavey Classic 115E extension cabinets driven by a Peavey rack power amp and preamp/FX processor. I don't remember the preamp/FX processor's model name, but it was a guitar-oriented unit with preamp tubes in it. Don't remember the power amp model either. But the Classic 115E cabs are open-back tweed-colored extension cabs from the early 90s, and are hard to find. There are certain guitar weirdos who would probably really dig them for blues. I think these had been re-speakered with Black Widows for high-powered clean steel use.

Recalling this makes me think, if I was looking around for my first lap steel amp, I'd include on my list of things to try a Peavey Classic 30 combo, a Classic 50 head and the various combo versions (2 x 12, 4 x 10)...you see all those things on CL from time to time and a lot of people like them. EL84 power tubes are cheap, etc. Not sure about the 50-watters, but an amp-repair buddy has told me that the 30-watter is a pretty solid unit but kind of a pain in the ass to work on, because it has a kind of multi-plane folded circuit board with thin ribbon-cable jumpers connecting the adjacent planes of the boards, and sometimes these fail and require further jumpering. He made it sound like it was a fiddly job but not impossible, and not such an issue that it made the amps suck overall. He still seemed to think pretty highly of them. Something to consider if you are pretty set on getting tubes.

 

[mexicanyella]

Hey TF, you might find this interesting. A short thread from over at TDPRI; this guy was coming at the steel-tone search from the opposite end as you, kind of. Might give you some things to think about as you try stuff. And you could probably find a lot of other steel-related stuff in that bunch of Telecaster wackos, before even visiting the Steel Guitar Forum...not that I'd discourage you from doing that.

Invalid Link Removed

 

[mexicanyella]

This thread has inspired me to get my steel out of the basement and dust it off, and give some thought to stringing it up in C6 tuning and giving that another go. There's a C6 instructional book by DeWitt Scott down there somewhere...

Or maybe I'll try an open chord tuning for awhile. It needs new strings, one way or the other. Here it is:

It says Roybert (Roy Bert?) on the headstock, and the logo appears to be spray-stenciled on. I haven't found any info on this thing online. I got it from the consignment wall of a mostly acoustic-oriented shop in Webster Groves, MO called Music Folk...probably in 1994-5. If I had to guess, I'd say it's something made by Valco and rebranded by some music store somewhere, late 40s-early 50s...but that's just a guess. I'd love to know more about it.

I like the brown bakelite knobs. I put a new volume pot in it years ago and the taper on it sucks. I may revisit that at some point so I can better perform volume swells with the knob as I play, trying to cop some of that pedal steel volume pedal vibe. The tone pot is non-functional; I just disconnected it. This thing tends toward dark/midrangy and I can't imagine ever wanting to darken it up with tone pot adjustments. Although maybe a different value pot and some cap experiments could change that.

There was a small homemade pickguard added at some point, covering the fingerpick gouges that you can see near the base of the fretboard. I took it off and it's floating around in the basement somewhere. I like it better without it; I think the gouges look kind of cool.

 

[mexicanyella]

Restringing thoughts got me looking for an online lap steel string gauges chart, and I found this. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the string gauges chart .pdf link:

John Ely's Steel Guitar Arrangements Download Area

 

[Rich Fiscus]

I'd like to know more about that 112 cab/cabs if you find out about it; it sounds interesting and I'd like to know the box configuration and what driver it has in it. Sounds like it was a good purchase!

I'll try to remember to get pictures next rehearsal. He thought it was a custom driver, but I want to find out more, if possible.

 

[mexicanyella]

I just restrung my "RoyBert" steel in C6 tuning last night, using heavier strings than I used last time I tried it. It's going to take some time for me to get it together in that tuning, but it really sings at the higher pitch and string tension.

Then today I found this little video clip of some playing in a six-string adaptation of E9 tuning, as used on pedal steels. This is cool:

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And I remembered a Youtube vid I saw a couple years back of a guy named Larry Hutcherson playing "Little Wing" in Em7 tuning.



Check out the "steel rolling down the neck" trick he does at 3:15. That Fender he's playing is the eight-string version of my first lap steel.

 

[Rich Fiscus]

I need to find some video of Larry playing with us. The first time I heard him, at rehearsal for a country band, my jaw was on the floor from his pedal steel, and then he moved over to his lap steel and warmed up with Crazy Train.

 

[mexicanyella]

I need to find some video of Larry playing with us. The first time I heard him, at rehearsal for a country band, my jaw was on the floor from his pedal steel, and then he moved over to his lap steel and warmed up with Crazy Train.

Doooo it!

 

[Rich Fiscus]

No rehearsal yet, but we had a band meeting last night. They're Telonics cabs. The 12 inch version of the one on the top in this brochure. His apparently doesn't have the Telonics driver in it. It has a JBL of some kind.



I only got a real look at them on a semi-dark stage, so I think there's less curvature to the baffle (under the vents) than I thought. His is a black face, so it's even harder to make out.

Link Removed only mentions the bottom cab being available in a 12 inch version. I suspect there's a lot more demand for 15 inch cabs among steel players, a lot of whom seem to favor either Black Widows or vintage JBL 15's.

 

[two fingers]

No rehearsal yet, but we had a band meeting last night. They're Telonics cabs. The 12 inch version of the one on the top in this brochure. His apparently doesn't have the Telonics driver in it. It has a JBL of some kind.

View attachment 2867490

I only got a real look at them on a semi-dark stage, so I think there's less curvature to the baffle (under the vents) than I thought. His is a black face, so it's even harder to make out.

Link Removed only mentions the bottom cab being available in a 12 inch version. I suspect there's a lot more demand for 15 inch cabs among steel players, a lot of whom seem to favor either Black Widows or vintage JBL 15's.

Man if they sound as cool as they look....

Very cool.

 

[mexicanyella]

Telonics, huh? Cool. As it happens, there was until a year or so ago a pretty cool music store--Duane's Music--in Troy, MO...run by a steel player/Peavey dealer. Before he retired and sold the business to a more guitar-centric guy, I used to check out his pedal steel and amps rig and shoot the breeze with him once in awhile, and the last time I saw him he seemed pretty jazzed about his new Telonics combo:

TCA-500B Combo Amplifier | Pro Audio | Telonics Inc.

If you click that link, be sure to check out the drop-down menu inder the heading "products." Huh?

Those extension cabs are pretty slick-looking. I bet they look really cool with a Quilter amp sitting on them, too.

One of my musical gear regrets is not ever getting around to trying the Evans combo amp Duane was using before getting the Telonics. Those sound like pretty nice, high-end clean machines and are kind of hard to come by. I was always curious how I'd like playing my guitar through one, and there was always one sitting RIGHT THERE every time I went in for strings and picks. Oh well, maybe I'll see one again someday.

 

[bholder]

Lap steel isn't just for breakfast anymore apparently..... (Yes, I have gone down a lap steel YouTube rabbit hole).

Looks like he's having fun!

 

[mexicanyella]

That link I posted in post no. 72? Well, down below the video of Doug Beaumier's E9 tuning demo is another demo of him playing in B11 tuning, and some of those lush chords sucked me in. I was able to retune my steel to B11 using the same new strings. Now I'm going to have to get a steel forum membership and start looking for B11 stuff to get me started.

I read a post somewhere back in the steel guitar forum rabbithole where someone referred to the A string in C6 tuning as "The Hawaiian Bomb." I thought that was funny...it is hard to learn how to keep that centrally located sixth out of stuff when you don't want it, which is a lot of why I switched to Dobro G years ago...much easier to play simple stuff and sound okay with/out really knowing how. Lots of material in C6 tuning, and some beautiful sounds once you get the hang of it. Maybe between C6 and B11 I'll learn something and get better on this thing now.

 

[two fingers]

That link I posted in post no. 72? Well, down below the video of Doug Beaumier's E9 tuning demo is another demo of him playing in B11 tuning, and some of those lush chords sucked me in. I was able to retune my steel to B11 using the same new strings. Now I'm going to have to get a steel forum membership and start looking for B11 stuff to get me started.

I read a post somewhere back in the steel guitar forum rabbithole where someone referred to the A string in C6 tuning as "The Hawaiian Bomb." I thought that was funny...it is hard to learn how to keep that centrally located sixth out of stuff when you don't want it, which is a lot of why I switched to Dobro G years ago...much easier to play simple stuff and sound okay with/out really knowing how. Lots of material in C6 tuning, and some beautiful sounds once you get the hang of it. Maybe between C6 and B11 I'll learn something and get better on this thing now.

Any idea where to get started with videos or material in open E? I'm thinking rock and blues will be where I spend a majority of my time on this thing. I got a couple steels and some picks. Now I need some direction.