Amp headroom vs overdrive?

[Nico Hillary]

Hi all, happy Thanksgiving, I hope you're having a great weekend with your loved ones.

I have a question about amps, tone, and clean versus slight overdrive.

Thanks to Jeff Newman's excellent videos, as well as some excellent advice right here on SGF, at long last I'm getting some pleasing sounds from my pedal steel thru a Bandit 112 transtube. But I'm still not quite there yet.

So, my question is really a 2-parter... I read a lot about amp 'headroom'. I always understood this to mean the amp stays clean right up to the stratosphere. Did I understand that right?

...However, listening to recordings, teaching videos, etc. I noticed there's a kind of "squish" to some pro's tone. I say squish, cos it's not mush, more like mush's little brother. Kind of like the amp or speaker is just breaking up ever so slightly. I always thought that brittle, glassy sound of steel was because the amp was so clean, but now I'm wondering if it is not quite so squeaky clean after all.

So, leaving aside "if it sounds good to you it's a good sound", is a teeny weeny bit of subtle natural overdrive a key part of the sound?

As always, thanks for your input!

[Bob Hoffnar]

Yes ! You have noticed that the truly great classic tones for the pedal steel that happened in the golden period in the 60’s are actually not clean. Even in more recent times the bulk of fantastic recorded pedalsteel have used some level of tube amplification beginning with Paul Franklin’s work with dire straights. Even that was a long time ago !

So trust your ears. You got it right.

[David Wren]

Great ears. You're on the right track. Do remember there is a difference between live performances, and recording

I think you will find many here do what I do.... strife for the cleanest sound (with head room for the VP) as possible... then using moderate settings on "mild" overdrive/distortion device (Brad Sarno's Earth Drive I found to work the best with modern steel pickups).... you can always dial in the amount of "drive" sound you wish.

With that said, also many on the forum will advise use of a tube amp,,,, so as you can see, experimentation may be the key for the sound you are looking for.

As for myself, when I record, I use very little effects, as opposed to play large live venues.

Best of luck.

[David Higginbotham]

That area where you're hearing a compressed sound but not quite overdriven sound is very musical. For me...it's the sound that I consider slightly "grainy" for lack of a better description but also smooth as glass at the same time. An example of this would be the guitar on "Main Street" by Bob Seger. That player had one of the best tones I've ever heard. He takes a different route on his lead ride where it goes into some overdrive but the rest of it is mesmerizing. That same approach and sound applied to steel guitar is what I've heard on some of the early steel players of the 60's and 70's like Tom Brumley on "Together Again and "Garden Party." Another example would be the steel on John Anderson's "Black sheep of the Family" even tho it's short fills. The tone and perfection adds so much to that song! These are for reference only because so many factors are included with the brand of steel, pickups, amps, speakers, effects, the players style and of course the magic of studio engineering and mixing.

I wish there was a way to capture the tone of the lead guitar on "Main Street" and apply that to pedal steel...I'd definitely be in tone heaven!

Here's an old post discussing much on the subject with many comments from some of our best experts!

Dave

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