What are the most common things people at shows have misidentified your steel guitar as?Ĭheese grater, stenographer’s typewriter, piano (most common), electric mountain dulcimer, upright horizontal lute, C&B torture machine. I haven’t figured out what’s wrong with it yet but I’m sure I’ll invent a problem soon and buy something else. It has brand-new changers C&C routed out of aluminum stock. “It’s not me, it’s the pedal steel!” My newest guitar is a 1969 Emmons push-pull that spent the ’90s touring with Joe Diffie. The only way to curb your insecurities is by constantly buying new gear. It’s very important to blame all of your problems as a player on the tools you have. You are constantly buying a new pedal steel. I talked with him about the pedal-steel guitar over coffee in Houston. He is a pedal-steel and banjo player and a nerd of the highest caliber. Read our new feature on him.Įllis: Will Van Horn plays in my band. Already an acknowledged ace on guitar at 27, Ellis has been reacquainting himself with the keys over the last few years. Ellis will be guest editing all week. Perhaps that’s why the two best tracks on a uniformly great record-the structurally sophisticated yet effortless opener “Perfect Strangers” and the brooding, soulful “California”-are keyboard-based. Use the optional StroboPlus Pitch Holder mounting bracket to attach the tuner to the changer-side leg of the pedal steel.After a pair of solid releases that established Robert Ellis as an eccentric singer/songwriter with a traditional country foothold, his new self-titled LP is as definitive and weirdly beautiful a statement of defiance as you’d expect from a guy whose primary touchstones are Paul Simon and Randy Newman, as opposed to Townes Van Zandt and Jerry Jeff Walker. Using a guitar cable, connect the StroboPlus HD input socket (right side marked with arrow) to the output socket of the steel guitar. When selected, the StroboPlus tuner handles E9 and C6 tuning in the Emmons style. system is also included in the StroboPlus tuner. When such a preset is selected, the StroboPlus tuner handles E9, C6 and Universal tuning in the Newman style. Peterson tuners feature these tuning system presets as a standard. Pedal steel guitarist and educator Jeff Newman devised a system of tuning which is popular with a great number of steel guitarists. When the image hovers or stops, the note is in tune. The semi-circular pattern rotates clockwise to indicate sharp and counter-clockwise to indicate flat. This also includes compensation for cabinet drop, so there is no need to add any extra adjustment. In short, the tuner automatically knows when to indicate whether or not an open string, pedal or lever position is correctly in tune. You can tune “straight up” by choosing the EQU preset, Newman-style by choosing the SE9 presets or Emmons-style by choosing the EM presets. Using such a preset means achieving precise, repeatable tunings and never having to remember a list of numbers or carry a chart. The tuner contains the tuning values for each open string, pedal and lever of a steel guitar with a choice of Newman or Emmons systems. The StroboPlus HD musical instrument tuner contains several presets for 10- and 12-string pedal steel guitar, commonly known as the Newman Tuning Chart and the Emmons Tuning Chart, covering E9, C6, and Universal tuning for pedal steel guitar.