Pedal Steel Guitar Preamp

Even though he keeps his overall pedal and plugin setup simple johnson admits he s a bit of a steel guitar heretic in another respect.

Pedal steel guitar preamp.

For guitar pedal steel or bass. He rarely uses an amp. The pedal steel itself has four legs several foot operated pedals and often multiple knee operated levers that bend certain strings up and down. Pedal steel guitars are played by pressing a steel bar on top of the pedal steel guitar strings with one hand while plucking them with fingerpicks on the other hand.

He runs some pedals to get other guitar sounds from the steel and organ tones too. The sms v8 octal tube preamp is the supreme tone machine that is built on the ideas of circuit minimalism and component quality. Originally developed for use with pedal steel guitar the black box is equally effective at breathing life into and enhancing the tone of upright or electric bass electric or acoustic guitar mandolin fiddle rhodes or wurlitzer electric piano synths and keyboards drum machines lap steel guitar studio mix tracks and more. A volume pedal in front of a preamp presents an impedance in parallel with the input impedance of an amp or preamp so in affect increases the load on the pickup which can affect the tone.

We play direct for the most part and with this volume pedal playing it s never a great signal going to the board. Since january of 1997 the steel guitar forum has been bringing all steel guitarists together in a spirit of friendship and a common love of the instrument. My 470k minimum input impedance listed above takes this into consideration so should be ok so long as the pot in the volume pedal is 500k or greater. Many older guitarists associate the term preamp closely with formerly ubiquitous eighties rack units from a da marshall mesa boogie and other companies.

The pedal steel already has an incredible beautiful sustain but sometimes i want to be able to squeeze a little more resonance out of it he tells us. Current guitar preamp options are much more varied however and the most convenient choice for the modern pedalboard bound guitarist is probably a pedal preamp. Optional transformer balanced xlr output rack shelf available. He uses a peavy session amp for his own monitoring on stage but nothing seems to get him a good signal to the board.