Sound of P/P - Vibrating thru body

Bengt Erlandsen · From: Brekstad, NORWAY

After reading about how the sound of a P/P has a lot to do with changer-fingers resting at body improves the overall sound. Why isnt the changer-fingers located on the left-hand side of the guitar so that all the vibrating strings can be in contact w the body of the guitar at all times. Or has this design already been tried and found not to work?

Bengt Erlandsen

David Doggett · Posted 8 Aug 2003 7:02 am

Bengt, there have been pedal steels with the pulls on the left, but I don't know much about them. Also, when Bud Issacs had the first big pedal steel hit (Slowly, Webb Pierce) some steelers put pedals on their standup lap steels by drilling holes behind the nut and hooking coathanger wires on the strings that went down to pedals on the floor. This raised the pitch by pulling on the strings behind the nut. Of course you could only have raises that way.

But the fact is that on the left end the vibrating strings are in direct contact with the body through the nut. In that regard, solid nuts without rollers sound noticeably better, and that accounts for some of the difference between the sound of pedal steels and lap steels. But on a pedal steel you will hear some squeaking as the wound strings are pulled or lowered with a solid nut. So they put rollers on pedal steel nuts. However, having had a solid nut on my old Maverick, it seemed to me that squeaking is mostly behind the nut and hardly gets amplified by the pickup. It would never be heard in a live performance, but might be a problem in the studio.

Also, I am a little skeptical of the whole "body contact" connection to tone. On my Emmons push/pull the fingers are only in direct contact with the body on raises (and only on the longest raise for double raises). On lowers they contact the tuning screw, not the body. And when the string is open with no raises or lowers, there is no direct body contact. When no raises are in use, there is no direct body contact on any finger. Also, if the guitar is out of adjustment and a raise doesn't contact the body, I don't notice any difference in tone.

The biggest mechanical difference (at the changer) I notice between a push/pull and an all-pull is that the fingers on a p/p are thicker and much more solid. Also they are not jointed, therefore both the raise finger and lower finger make solid contact with the changer axle, which is anchored solidly to the body. Thus, the fingers make a more solid contact with the body, but it is through the changer, not necessarily through direct body contact. On lowers, the finger contacts the tuning screw, which is anchored in the metal endplate, which is connected solidly to the body. That probably helps. And the raise pull rods under the guitar are connected to the finger with a thin wire that does not absorb much vibration or pass it along to the pull-rod-bell-crank-pedal-rod linkage. In contrast, All-pulls are connected through flimsy, jointed fingers to the long flexible pull-rods under the guitar that undoubtedly absorb some vibration that is lost in the mechanical undercarriage. The entire all-pull changer is flimsier and more complicated. Just my own personal observations.

---
Student of the Steel, Fessy S12U, Emmons S12 E9 P/P, Carter D12, Nashville 400, Fender Squire, Peavey Transtube Supreme into JBL 15", 1968 Gibson J50, '60s Kay arch-top, 7-string Raybro, customized Korean Regal square-neck, roundneck Dobro 90C, 1938 Conn Chu Berry tenor sax, '50s Berg mouthpiece, Hamilton upright piano, Casio keyboard. You make it, I'll play it (sort of).

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 08 August 2003 at 08:13 AM.]

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 08 August 2003 at 09:12 AM.]

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 08 August 2003 at 09:18 AM.]

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

C Dixon · From: Duluth, GA USA

From a purely Sceintific point of view, the most perfect nut AND bridge is a knive edge piece of metal. On some of the Eddie Alkire steels, they came pretty close to this at the nut at least. And the sustain is outstanding; everything else being equal. The downside is, strings (particularly wound strings) make a spine tingling sound when you are tuning the guitar.

With much respect, I must take exception that BCT is not what it is said to be. Believe me gentleman, this be a fact. Let me digress and give you just one revelation about it on another guitar.

On prewar bakelite Ricks, the strings came up through the body of the guitar. Since bakelite is sooooo brittle, they decided to mount the strings on a metal tail piece instead of drilling all the way thru the body.

Just about everyone, (BUT Rickenbacher) will tell you that this diminished the sound measurably. The MOST noted critic was and IS Jerry Byrd. In fact, vintage instrument dealers KNOW this; and the price goes down on all models that have the metal tail piece. In fact it goes down by almost half in some cases JUST because of it. The guitars are almost identical except for that.

My point is, sound vibrations through the body of a guitar make notable differences. In the case of a P/P, there is little question by those that are in the 'know' that those lower fingers held hard against the body MAKE the difference.

carl

David Doggett · Posted 9 Aug 2003 4:14 pm

I think we agree, Carl. It's not just that the raise finger contacts the body on a raise, it's that even when the raise finger is not in direct contact with the body, a lot of other parts of the changer are, including the lower fingers.

That being said, it is not clear to me if having the changer in solid contact with the body helps tone and sustain because the body vibrates and resonates, or because the body is heavy and rigid and therefore doesn't drain off any vibration or sustain from the strings. It's not an acoustic instrument. Vibrations of the wood body cannot cause a signal in the magnetic pickups.

On the other hand, the resonant body proponents think the resonating body amplifies and sustains the vibrations of the strings, which the pickups do detect. Maybe that's true. I'm not a sonic engineer. But I do know that in acoustic instruments the amplification one hears is not the strings themselves, but the top, sound board, resonator, whatever. And that acoustic amplification is bought by loosing sustain. A banjo is loudest, with no sustain. An acoustic guitar is somewhere in between, with some loudness and some sustain. A solid body guitar has the most sustain, but no loudness without juice.

So I can see how anchoring a solid changer in good contact with a rigid and massive solid body provides the maximum sustain, and robs the least tone. Whether vibrations in the body feed back and enhance string vibration amplitude and sustain, I'm not so sure about that. It seems too much like getting something from nothing, with no tradeoff. How do you get more energy back into the strings without picking them again? I'm not saying it's not true. I just haven't been able to get my head around this.

Bobby Lee · From: Cloverdale, California, USA

David, you just lit the "aha!" light in my brain.

To paraphrase what you said, the fact that the body doesn't resonate is what increases sustain. If some of the string energy is allowed to dissipate in the changer, the string will not vibrate as long. Coupling the changer finger firmly to the body helps to keep the vibration energy in the string, where it belongs.

Bobbe Seymour has mentioned that just tightening all of the screws that hold the instrument together will improve the "tone". I see now why this is so. Wherever the string energy can escape, it will!

------------------

Bobby Lee - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs, Open Hearts
Sierra Session 12 (E9), Williams 400X (Emaj9, D6), Sierra Olympic 12 (C6add9),
Sierra Laptop 8 (D13), Fender Stringmaster (E13, A6),
Roland Handsonic, Line 6 Variax

Jeff A. Smith · From: Angola,Ind. U.S.A.

Maybe I'm not following all the nuances of the discussion, and where it's ending up, so let me check my understanding; back to the "vibrating legs test":

It's conceivable that a theoretically possible steel -- which was perfect (or nearly so) from the standpoint of keeping vibrations in the string -- would give the same results as a bad steel, which allowed most of the vibrations to escape through the changer. The only difference is that the perfect steel wouldn't allow any vibrations to escape the strings, even through the body down into the legs. The bad steel, on the other hand, doesn't allow the legs to vibrate because most of the energy has escaped into the air from the changer, or dissipated through the body.

However, since this perfected steel does not yet exist, the "leg test" is useful because it tells us if a steel is good enough to at least keep the vibrations in the body, and not allow them to dissipate into the air.

Correct me if I'm missing something...

David Doggett · Posted 9 Aug 2003 10:34 pm

Right, Bob and Jeff. When you pick the string it imparts vibrational energy into the string. It continues to vibrate until the energy dissipates (because of friction within the string if nothing else). There's no way to increase the energy (sustain and volume) without picking the string again. The best sustain and tone might be with a body made out of a big block of diamond. You can change the tone and loose sustain by draining energy out of the vibrating string. This will happen if the bridge and nut are not firmly fixed in a rigid solid body (previously someone suggested carving the bridge and nut out of the same block of diamond). One would think the overtones and highs will be lost first (they have less energy to begin with). So if everything is not solid, the sound would be darker and muddier and less rich in overtones. Conversely, better sustain should sound trebly, but rich in overtones, and with good string separation. In other words, like an Emmons push/pull. The string vibrations could be drained off either by loose joints between bridge, body and nut, or by a soft, mushy body. In either case you'd feel less vibration passing all the way through to the legs. So the leg test seems to make sense. I think it is this vibration that people feel in well built steels, and they jump to the conclusion that this "resonance" somehow feeds back to the strings and improves tone and sustain. To my way of thinking this resonance is a sign of good tone and sustain, but not the cause of it.

In fact, if the whole instrument is vibrating, that drains off some energy too. By this line of thinking heavier instruments would vibrate less and possibly have better tone and sustain. There are plenty of people who say that big double-necks sound better than small single-necks. As long as everything is rigid, a bigger heavier body should take less vibration away from the strings, and so let them ring with better tone and sustain.

So to sum up my idea, less solidly built instruments can alter the tone and sustain by taking it away, but better built instruments don't add any tone or sustain, they just take away less.

But this is all just what Einstein called a "thought experiment". You'd have to go into a sound lab and do some real experiments to prove any of it, and probably somebody has. But it's pretty clear that very soon after they invented the electro-magnetic pickup, they discovered that what sounded good for acoustic instruments, didn't for electric ones, and they invented the solid body electric guitar.

I think we have a lot of instincts about the relationship of body resonance to sound from our experience with acoustic instruments, but I am very suspicious about how much of that carries over to solid body electic instruments. They're a whole different animal, with different rules. I don't think you want "resonance", you want rigidity and solidity. Light and resonant spruce (a soft wood) works great for acoustic guitar tops and piano sound boards, but for a solid body electric guitar you want rock maple (the hardest of the hardwoods).

David Mason · From: Cambridge, MD, USA

The heaviest solid body electrics made of maple and exotic woods in the 70's and 80's had great sustain, but an excruciatingly squeaky-clean, shrill tone. They were useful for overdriving a tube amp to get a heavy metal sound, but they sounded tinky through clean amps at low volumes. Lighter, more resonant guitars had a warmer, woodier tone. SO: I would propose that what we refer to as tone is actually what remains of string vibrations after various "imperfections" in the guitar bleed off certain frequencies. In a pedal steel, these variables would include the weight and type of wood, changer materials and construction, mica vs. lacquer etc. Hopefully, manufacturers experiment enough with these variables to match them to achieve the best tone; if you put a Sho Bud changer on an Emmons, it might sound like a cross between them, but it might sound considerably worse than either. Otherwise, that revered P/P tone was created by happenstance, and is just what people got used to hearing. I have noticed that solidbody manufacturers have gotten totally away from the "big brass sustain block" school of design lately. In this context, sustain and tone seem to almost be at opposite ends of a continuum. With pedal steel, it seems to me as though proper volume pedal technique makes sustain almost a moot point; how much more do you want, anyway? Theoretically, you could build a 200 pound steel with steel fingers and a granite necks, but the tone would probably drill your fillings out.

Jeff A. Smith · From: Angola,Ind. U.S.A.

Rainer Hackstaette · From: Bohmte, Germany

b0b,

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

Dennis Detweiler · From: Solon, Iowa, US

So....if you want more sustain, you loose some warmth and have a brighter tone? I always thought the Emmons guitar was a little brighter in tone than most. Maybe Chaulker steered away from the Emmons guitar since he prefered the deeper softer tone?
Another note: My dad rebuilt a homemade 12 string steel several years ago. It is a rather cruel built guitar. However, it ended up to be the most unreal sustaining guitar I'd ever heard. You could play some notes or a chord on it and go to the restroom. When you returned it was still resonating.
It was all pull with the changer bolted into the oak body via chrome headed carriage bolts. The neck was also oak. The key head was the standard replica of most other guitars and screwed onto the oak body from the underside. I've heard no other steel with as much sustain. I would assume the sustain is a result of the oak body and changer bolted through the body? This would be a great guitar for the study of sustain.
Dennis

Bengt Erlandsen · From: Brekstad, NORWAY

Thanks for all the replies but what about my ??? about having the changer fingers on the opposite side so the piece of the string that vibrates goes straight to the body of the guitar. Assuming that all tuning and Changer-fingers are located on the left hand side of the guitar.

Bengt Erlandsen

David Doggett · Posted 10 Aug 2003 11:16 am

What several people said above indicates that maximum volume and sustain of all the overtones and highs might not be pleasing. Certain designs and materials (or even loosening some screws) might get a warmer or darker tone by loosing some of the highs. I would think it would be better to start with all the overtones and sustain you could get, then adjust the tone by voicing the pickups or amps. But it's all a balancing act. When I got a Hilton pedal, all the new highs were too much. My BL-712 pickup was designed for a pot pedal, so getting a new pedal meant I had to replace my pickup.

The business about what happens to the strings behind the bridge or nut is more related to Bengt's original question. There is a pretty strong belief by some that the extra string length going back to the tuning keys or to a tailpiece at the bridge end improves sustain (as opposed to keyless tuners, or running the strings immediately through the body behind the bridge). This makes sense to me, because it allows some vibration on the far side of the bridge or nut. It's like a seesaw. If the string wants to flex in one direction, it is more free to do that (with less bending at the bridge or nut) if it can flex in the opposite direction on the other side of the bridge or nut. So key heads and tail pieces would seem to let the string between the bridge and nut vibrate more freely, than if it is tightly pegged behind the bridge or nut.

So to get to Bengt's question, why not have both the bridge and nut solidly attached to the body, then have the changer set back from the bridge (or nut as Bengt suggests)? I think that has been tried. Doesn't Excel have a design like that?

Jeff A. Smith · From: Angola,Ind. U.S.A.

A couple of years ago, Sage Harmos (a respected instrument builder) and others talked a fair amount about having the changer and tuners on the left. Sage was actually working on a design, and I think at least one other person may have already done it.

I just did a search in Pedal Steel with "changer" as keyword, and "Sage" as user name. That brought up some interesting stuff, some of which also deals with issues involving resonance and sustain.

This is one of the earliest threads; check out page two:

http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum5/HTML/001799-2.html

There is more in-depth stuff available with the search.

Jeff Agnew · From: Dallas, TX

Bobbe Seymour · From: Hendersonville TN USA, R.I.P.

You are missing the main point guys, Sympathic vibrations in the total body construction backfeed the strings causing secondary vibrations in the vibrating string, in other words, loops and lodes. These are what make warm pleasing tones/timbre.
Forget about most of these other "little" things like screw tentions, spring tentions, and lower and raise bar contacts. The secrete is the total ability of the body to backfeed (revibrate) the strings from the bridge back up the strings. A resonate body is what does this. The pickup can only sense the magnetic impulses of the wire, so the string/wire needs to have the backfeeding to be able to sense the timbre.

This is the total concept of timbre in a steel guitar.

Look at the thickness of the Emmons wood, The hole in every body, The mounting of the mechanisum, The length of the keyhead in relation to the string length. The Emmons secret? It's a total concept, a mass of things that work together.

Just adding a quick fix to any bad sounding guitar won't do it guys.

Look at where the string/pedal stops are on a Emmons P-P guitar sometime, then look at a great sounding Z-B guitar. Notice how they both stop at the endcasting and not in mid air like a all pull guitar? Some folks say that a "floating mechanisum" can't ever sound as good as a "positive stop" style.(EmmonsP-P, Z-B,) Possibly,but the new LeGrande sounds pretty good to me. But this gets back to the Emmons body technology. It's the grand sum of the entire scheme of things and not just one or two "Tricks".

Bobbe Seymour · From: Hendersonville TN USA, R.I.P.

Does anyone understand what I'm saying here?

Jeff A. Smith · From: Angola,Ind. U.S.A.

I think so, Bobbe.

However, I have to admit I'm now wondering how much of an influence you think things like body and neck material have. Not too long ago there was a thread where you seemed to be minimizing -- for example -- the difference between mica and lacquer, and wood and metal necks. As I recall, you then were emphasizing the role the changer has.

Would you agree with the idea that better-built guitars don't actually add any sustain to the string, they just take away less? (Note I'm not talking about tone in this question, just sustain. This seems to be the idea that had gained acceptance on this thread before your arrival.)

Bobbe Seymour · From: Hendersonville TN USA, R.I.P.

Jeff, we are learning some strange things about the materials steels are manufactured from. We are assembeling a metal neck Emmons P-P guirat now that is pretty famous in the steel industry. It sounded great, no maple in it at all, no mica on it at all. It seems as though the path of vibration that leads to "backfeeding the string", has more to do with the design of the structure than the type of tree its made from.
Back to mica as opposed to pure wooden bodys, Mica adds quite a bit of strength to a structure (body) and possibly can even slightly help sustain and timbre,(on steel guitars only) but I'm not totally convinced of this fact yet even though Emmons mica bodys with the 12000 lbs. of pressure used when applying the mica, seems to sound extremely great.
Remember, it's the vibrating body that sets up vibrations that re-vibrate the strings that makes the timbre, good or bad. Yes, this does mean that anything that lets the body vibrate and "reshake" the strings, will affect the timbre of the guitar. BUT! Some things make a lot more difference than others. Next time you see a violin player playing, walk up and put a closepin on his bridge, know what will happen?

In an aluminum neck steel guitar, it's not the neck material that makes a slightly different tone, it's the different way the bridge is constructed for use with the two different materials.
This is referring to Sho-Bud and Emmons guitars which are the brands that we have spent so much time expermenting with.

Jeff A. Smith · From: Angola,Ind. U.S.A.

Bobbe Seymour · From: Hendersonville TN USA, R.I.P.

Jeff, if the pickup is microphonic, yes, if it's only picking up magnetic impulses, no.
I remember Buddy E mounting a contact microphone to the keyhead end of his steel once many years ago, just to pick up cabinet vibrations, then just slightly turning it on through another channel in his amp. (Fender Twin I think). This didn't add anything but noise really, because it's the added loops and lodes being added to the string that needs to be picked up,by the magnetic pickup, not body vibrations.

Remember, timbre is made by incedental , secondary vibrations, reintroduced into the primary vibrating string. Period. This applies to every string instrument made.

[This message was edited by BobbeSeymour on 14 August 2003 at 08:45 PM.]

Bobbe Seymour · From: Hendersonville TN USA, R.I.P.

One more thing, I, along with several players and builders have, over the years, done about every imaginable "tone" type experment possible. This includes looking into the "timbre" that builders and players of many other types of string instruments are expermenting with.
Yes guys, you are touching on my true passion, this is the crazy thing that really drives me. This is why I live. I like fast cars, aircraft, good food, great friends, but this quest for understanding tone/timbre is what I'm always consumed with. Hey, we all have to have something, right?

Rick Collins · From: Claremont , CA USA

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