Dual pick-ups for distortion on steel?

Marty Broussard · From: Broussard, Louisiana, USA

I'm at a "fork in the road" and would appreciate some feedback. I want to get "that" distortion tone and it appears that I currently have two choices:

A-Try the Seymour Duncan Twin Tube pedal

B-Start experimenting with an additional pick-up placed on the neck of my steel. I have a couple of pick-ups that will fit under the strings without having to mod the neck, but then I'd have to find a way to blend the neck with the existing E66 and continue on to the volume pedal. I'd want to do this without an enormous amount of soldering, etc so I'd need some gadget to isolate/blend without cutting into the guitar cabinet, etc...

I am only considering the neck pick-up because I haven't found a distortion pedal that I've liked. I am playing through a Peavey Stereo Chorus 2112 that has a VERY good sounding distortion channel (when using a standard guitar)that I can access via a footswitch.(I like that convenience) Hearing the Peavey's distortion with a guitar forced me to think about adding the extra neck pick-up on my steel.

I suspect that all of you have been able to experiment more than I could ever hope to do myself so.....is the extra pick-up exercise worth it?
(if there's already a thread on this please point me to it)
Thanks!!
Marty B.

Mike Neer · From: NJ

Nevermind--I didn't get your post at first but now I think I do.

OK, you want your steel to sound the way your guitar does through the Peavey. There are many excellent pedal makers out there. One that I have used in the past is Nick Greer's Ghetto Stomp.
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Jim Sliff · From: Lawndale California, USA

An extra pickup will get you a wider variation in tones but really has nothing to do with distortion. Two pickup 6-string guitars do not distort when going from one pickup to a combined position, so I guess I'm missing what you're really aiming for.

If you want distortion, though, you have a couple of method choices:

1) Get a medium powered tube amp, make sure it's serviced and adjusted properly, and play with it cranked up - then use your volume pedal (which I think is terribly impractical) or a tone/volume control circuit plugged into the output jack to "drive" the amp into natural distortion. Far better than anything you can get in a box.

2) Same as above, but turn the amp down a bit (but not much) and use an overdrive pedal to push the amp over the edge (note - a REAL overdrive, NOT a faux-distortion box).

3) Use your existing amp but play through a "distortion (not overdrive) pedal - my favorite is the BJF Dyna Red, but the inexpensive MXR Distortion+ isn't bad. It does help, however, to have a tone control on your guitar - usually for distorted tones you want to roll off a bit of treble.

FWIW the Duncan pedal will get you PREAMP distortion - but that's not what you hear when you hear a cranked up tube amp - that's POWER tube distortion, a much richer and more complex sound.
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No chops, but great tone
1930's/40's Rickenbacher/Rickenbacker 6&8 string lap steels
1921 Weissenborn Style 2; Hilo&Schireson hollownecks
Appalachian, Regal & Dobro squarenecks
1959 Fender 400 9+2 B6;1960's Fender 800 3+3+2; 1948 Fender Dual-8 Professional

David Doggett · Posted 19 Jun 2009 3:31 pm

I think it may be too simple to characterize the Duncan Twin Tube box as merely preamp distortion. I don't know the secret to the design, but it has two tubes in it, and it seems to be an attempt to use them somehow to mimic the whole sound of a cranked tube amp, including power tube distortion. It does it pretty well. Maybe it's not exactly like a whole tube amp in overdrive, but then no two tube amps sound exactly alike either. It's the next best thing to having a second amp dedicated for distortion. Right now the only way I could match or beat it would be to have one big amp with all the clean headroom I need, and a second smaller amp that will distort at usable volume. For my purposes, the SDTT is good enough to allow me to avoid that second amp.

I agree about the pickups. Two would give more tone options. But I don't see that they have anything to do with distortion.

Bob Hoffnar · From: Austin, Tx

I have seen steels with a 2nd neck pickup wound heavy that players use for there distortion sound. Check with Dan Tyack. He does great with that sound.
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Bob

David Doggett · Posted 19 Jun 2009 11:16 pm

Seems like a volume pedal would attenuate the signal of a heavy wound pickup. Seems like you would have to max out the volume pedal to get the overly hot pickup distortion, and that would defeat the purpose of having a volume pedal. Just doesn't seem like the best way to get distortion.

Dave Mudgett · From: Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee

I'm picking up on the fact that you like the sound of the Peavey Classic Chorus 212's distortion channel, which, based on my impression from playing quite a few of these that were made in the 80s, is a pretty buzzy, solid-state kind of distortion. If you've been trying things like Tube Screamers and so on, I think they're quite different. I really like the Duncan Twin Tube Classic, but I think that is even more different. It's smooth and tube-like, not solid-state-like.

I think you probably need to get yourself into a store with a lot of distortion pedals and try a bunch of them and see what you actually like. Places like Sam Ash, Guitar Center, and so on, typically have tons of them.

But the other thing is that, to my ears, distorted pedal steel sounds a lot different than distorted guitar. When you try distortion pedals, try them with your steel, not your guitar.

As far as two pickups go, I think it depends on what kind of tone you want. A pickup further away from the bridge gives a different tone since it picks up a different set of harmonics, and then you can blend that with the bridge pickup. Since a neck pickup is closer to the center of the string length, the vibrations it picks up to be wider, other things being equal, and one tends to get a fuller response across the frequency spectrum. Only you can tell whether or not you'll like that. Think about how that changes your sound on your guitars and try to imagine how it would change your steel sound.

PS - I would not cut up a pedal steel I really cared about to put a second pickup on it. Maybe if I had one that was kind of beat and didn't really give me what I want - I might do that as an experiment. I suppose with a currently-manufactured aluminum neck, it would be possible to get a replacement, cut it up, try out the pickup, and be able to go back to stock if you don't like it.

To get more cogent responses, you might try to describe, in words, the type of sound you're going for. Or even better yet - maybe you could post a sound clip of that desired guitar tone through the Peavey.

Ken Metcalf · From: San Antonio Texas USA

It has been my observation that a humbucker will distort more effectively and a single coil will have a more pleasant clean sound.
I used to use split coil PUs in six strings,
Flip switch, stomp pedal, play lead.
I now use a lexicon and have no distortion,, Problem solved.
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Little Walter PF-89.
Bunch of stomp boxes

Bob Hoffnar · From: Austin, Tx

The way I think about it is different pickups in different places on the neck give you tonal options. Some of those options may work better for an overdriven sound than others. Many bottleneck slide players prefer the sound of there neck pickup.
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Bob

Scott Appleton · From: Ashland, Oregon

a tube distortion if you use a solid state amp and a transistor distortion if
you use a tube amp .. Zen drive for a smooth overdrive .. bluesy jazzzy ..
tube screamer for a fender like distortion .. the Mesa V tube pedal works
great .. did not like the Duncan .. Liquid sound Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde a good one.
try em out at your local musitessen ..

David Doggett · Posted 21 Jun 2009 11:59 am

Also, some distortion boxes work better before the volume pedal, some after. So unfortunately you have to try each box both places to see what all the options are. Some boxes, such as the Duncan Twin Tube, can give pick sensitive distortion if put before the volume pedal. That's what I'm after for blues. Other boxes (Tube Screamer, Zendrive) are simply on or off, and don't seem to have a pick sensitive range no matter where you put them. If you want to have overdrive distortion controlled by your volume pedal, the box has to go after the VP. I prefer to control distortion with my fingers, and use the VP strictly to control volume, whether it is distorted or not. Others like to control distortion with their volume pedal. This is another reason picking a distortion box for steel is different than picking one for guitar.

Dan Tyack · From: Olympia, WA USA

I know just what you are talking about, Martin. Amps which sound great when cranked with guitar sound like crap with a pedal steel. The pedal steel sounds harsh and shrill.

Multiple pickups *can* help with this. I use a Tonealigner in the neck position and a Bill Lawrence 705 in the bridge position and I have a wide variety of sounds available. Many amps and pedals that don't sound that great with just the bridge pickup come to life with either the neck pickup or mixing the two.

Jim Sliff · From: Lawndale California, USA

Like Dan I use 2 pickups (on my Fenders - haven't found a workable solution for my GFI yet - anyone has an Idea email me!!), and the neck pickup with the tone control rolled off a bit gives a much smoother, "round" distortion tone....basically more cello-like. Then again, most steels don't have tone controls (something I find really bothersome) and amp tone controls DO NOT serve the same function as rolling off some treble *before* the amp.

On my Teles I have 1) One of Red Rhodes' original Velvet Hammer pickups and 2) a Fralin attempt at a clone - not successful, but a great pickup in its own way and the only one on the planet. They are a unique design with a somewhat low-output primary coil and a secondary that provides a huge output increase - Tele players commonly call it the "boost" coil. It's what Clarence White used from roughly mid-'69 until late '72 or early '73 (and had been removed...and lost...when Marty Stuart bought the guitar).

It has a long learning curve and some really fun quirks (email if you want the whole scoop - it'd take too long to type up right now) but the primary idea is turning your tube amp WAY up, using the low-output coil and picking very lightly. Then you flip the switch to kick in the "boost" coil and the thing simply roars. It's a touch-players' dream, as you can use your fingers and guitar controls to "drive" the overdrive and distortion. It sounds like a description of a tapped humbucker, but it works in a completely different way....

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