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Peterson Tuners have been used for many decades to tune the open strings, pedals and levers on pedal steel guitars, they are programmable and already feature several preset tuning settings for steel guitars using accepted systems like those originally devised by Jeff Newman and Emmons for E9, C6 and Universal tuning. No matter what method you use, an accurate tuner is a necessity. Some players tune “straight up” meaning that the major thirds are sharp and the minor thirds are flat, but most prefer not to forego the sweetness of these intervals and tune them so that they are totally beat-less and consonant. The flaws of Equal temperament reveal themselves primarilly when major or minor thirds are played, and the long sustained tones produced by the pedal steel guitar show up these flaws more than pretty much any other instrument, many players aim and strive to eliminate these flaws by tuning their steels using special cent offsets for each string.
#EMMONS STEEL GUITAR KNEE LEVER PROFESSIONAL#
Many seasoned professional steel players “tweak” their tuning to improve their sound we call this “Sweetened Tuning”.īecause the steel guitar is a fretless instrument, it does not need to conform to the same compromises as regular fretted guitar is subjected to. Setting up and tuning a pedal steel can be a daunting task without a special tuner designed for pedal steel guitar tuning. The most common pedal steel guitars have 10 strings, followed by Universal 12 string instruments which purport to offer the same versatility as a double 10 string instrument, 8 stringed instruments were very popular in the 1950s and 1960s, they are less popular nowadays.Ĭentral to the pedal steel guitar is its ability to change tunings mid song with the help of foot pedals and knee levers which change the tension on the open strings thereby altering the tuning.
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The pedal steel guitar is usually tuned to either E9 or C6 - or both in the case of a double neck, but there are other tunings.