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Topic: Hot Pickups |
Emmett Clough
From:
Arkansas, USA
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Posted 30 Jan 2009 3:28 am |
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| Will someone please tell me why a steel guitar pickup is called "hot"? when the amp with a regular electric guitar "stratocaster" at the same volume on the amp, will blow the roof off, seems that would be the hotter one. |
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Zeke Cory
From:
Hinsdale, New York USA
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Posted 30 Jan 2009 4:34 am Volume pedal
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| I cannot answer your question directly, but try plugging your steel directly into your amp, no volume pedal. You will find the steel signal as hot as a regular guitar is. This has been my observaton. It appears the volume pedal is what seems to cut back the "hot" signal somewhat. I would be very interested in other observations as well. |
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Donny Hinson
From:
Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.
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Posted 30 Jan 2009 8:53 am Re: Hot Pickups
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| Emmett Clough wrote: |
| Will someone please tell me why a steel guitar pickup is called "hot"? when the amp with a regular electric guitar "stratocaster" at the same volume on the amp, will blow the roof off, seems that would be the hotter one. |
The pickup in a steel, being close to the bridge (where the strings don't move very much) doesn't get a lot of signal, and most of that is highs. So if you set the Strat so that only the bridge pickup is on, I think you'll find a different result! And, as Zeke says, your volume pedal may have something to do with it, too. |
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Dave Mudgett
From:
Central Pennsylvania and Gallatin, Tennessee
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Posted 30 Jan 2009 9:42 am
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Not all steel guitar pickups are hot, but I think many modern pedal steel pickups are called hot because they are.
I think the points about the close-to-bridge position and volume pedal padding are on target. To maintain reasonable nominal volume balance on a Strat, I need to keep the neck pickup quite low and raise the bridge pickup considerably higher.
Most of my modern pedal steel pickups, directly into the amp with no volume pedal or other effects, overload the tube preamp sections of my old Fenders to the point where I need to replace the first preamp tube from 12AX7 with a lower-gain tube like the 5751 or 12AY7 - or resolve to never floor the volume pedal at full string attack. No guitar pickup I have does that except a heavily overwound humbucker - not even a normal Gibson PAF.
To my ears, a lot of the heavily wound modern pedal steel pickups (except something like a Lawrence, which are designed quite differently) exhibit a strong midrange response characteristic of more heavily wound guitar pickups. But this goes with the extreme bridge positioning, and through the right amp, sounds just fine to me. |
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Emmett Clough
From:
Arkansas, USA
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Posted 30 Jan 2009 2:42 pm Hot Pickups
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| Thanks Zeke, Donny & Dave, the things you mentioned probably are the answers to this question, and what you said makes a lot of sense. I'll try the unplugged from the pedal and straight into the amp thing. Thanks Again E.C. |
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Robert Harper
From:
Alabama, USA
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Posted 30 Jan 2009 6:07 pm Hot
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I think that plugging your steel directly into the amp removed the impedance mismatch caused by the pedal. Haven't tried this with Hilton, however. Ever wonder why the goodrich had a matchbox?
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"Oh what a tangled web we weave when we first begin to deceive" Someone Famous |
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