Over the past few months, I’ve developed a new steel guitar copedent and applied it to a Desert Rose “Vintage Pro” S-10 steel guitar. It’s a D6th tuning, but the top 2 strings are like the E9th. It includes the standard pedals from both the E9th and C6th tuning of a double-neck pedal steel. I’ve recorded some songs to demonstrate the basic capabilities of the system.
This first recording shows the most fundamental aspect of pedal steel – the full step bend. On the original hit recording, Bernie Leadon used a B-Bender Telecaster, not a pedal steel. I copied his solo and added a few licks of my own along the way:
Next I tried a modern country hit. Dan Dougmore, a top Nashville session player, played the original parts on E9th pedal steel. There was nothing on the record that I couldn’t find on the D6th Chromatic.
My good friends Sam and Allegra of Solid Air performed one of Allegra’s original songs online during the pandemic. I heard it and thought that pedal steel would be nice in it. They agreed. I recorded it from the headphone jack of my computer and added my part.
To demonstrate the C6th pedals, I made a Band-In-A-Box rhythm track for an original tune I wrote many years ago.
I’ve heard steel guitar in New Age music before. This original composition has a real Hearts of Space feel to it. Again, the accompaniment is Band-In-A-Box.
To get back to the traditional country roots of the instrument, I played a medley of waltz tunes normally heard on the fiddle.
Here’s the copedent chart:
These recordings were made with a Zoom R8 portable recorder. The Desert Rose pedal steel has a Telonics X10 pickup. A Telonics volume pedal, Strymon DIG delay, and Strymon Iridium amp simulator were also used (direct recording). The recording levels were balanced and normalized in Audacity on the computer.
I’m happy to answer any questions about this project. Thanks for listening.
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Looks a little like the Buddy Emmons 12-string tuning, with the sixth in the middle, all be it is a whole tone lower.
But it doesn’t have the middle 9th tone. It’s really more like a C6th without the low C string. The idea came from Bobby Black’s 11-string non-pedal, which is tuned (low to high)
C F A C E G A C E B D
I took that and raised it a full step. One idea of Buddy’s that I used was that the first pedal only raises one string. That’s pretty elegant, when you stop and think about it.
Bob – thank you so much for including me in your PSG messaging – your information on just tone tuning is something I’ve been waiting for for a long time 🙂 I have yet to start on my PSD adventure – I ordered an S10 from GFI Istruments last October, but they are back logged due to Covid 19 circumstances, so I may still have a few months before I get my guitar. Meanwhile, thanks for your cool audio links and educational material 🙂 John Harshfield, Lapeer, Mi.