How to emulate "metallic" steel tone - Walter Haynes?

[James Strelow]

Wondering if anyone has any insights on getting this sound on pedal steel like on this recording of Crazy by Willie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnYEQbEHNZE

according to wikipedia I believe it was Walter Haynes playing on the record? I really love that kind of metallic "pingy" sound where you can really hear the attack on the strings. The setup had to be relatively straightforward for the era it was recorded. Is it as simple as a clean Fender tube amp with a single coil pickup with lots of treble? My steel has a Lace alumitone (which I very much have enjoyed) and I typically play through a solid state amp so basically complete opposite of what they would have been using at the time. Wondering if there might be a way to emulate that sound?

[Donny Hinson]

Turn up the treble some, and play close to the pickup. A lot of that character comes from a low-wound, single coil pickup, but dialing in more treble and picking up near the changer using modern gear will come pretty close. That sound is what made pedal steel popular back in the early to mid 1960's, and most steel guitarists back then had a similar tone. Nowadays, steel guitar tones on recordings are determined by producers, not by players, with the end result being that most players in the last couple of decades sound fuller and richer, tonally pretty much the same.

[Dave Grafe]

What Donny said, exactly.

[James Strelow]

Donny I will try that out thank you!!

[Robert Miller]

Important note. It's almost impossible for those very sizzling highs you're hearing to escape any passive tone and/or volume potentiometers on your guitar. If you're sporting anything under 500k ohm resistance to ground on the output, (1x250ohm, 2x500ohm, etc.), those frequencies are DOA. The amp can't replace what doesn't reach it.

That's in the "nerdy, but necessary," category. You can get super close and glassy, but you're never capturing that snake hiss frequency you're hearing on the pick attack on that cut if those frequencies are running to ground at the front end. A passive 500k ohm volume pedal is about all they can stand, so to speak. 1 Meg would be even better, but the tapers are weird.

[Nathan Pocock]

I will come at this from the perspective of a recording engineer. That sounds direct into the console to me. I’ve recorded steel a couple times like that and patched it through software amps in Pro Tools, but if you just plug the steel directly into the console it sounds an awful lot like that recording. I could be wrong, but most amps (or really I should say speaker cabs) are going to roll off that extra high stuff that you’re hearing. If you want to get this sound live I’d suggest something like an acoustic guitar or keyboard amp that has a high driver in addition to the low driver, or a DI into a PA without any kind of speaker sim/modeler/IR.

[Gary Hoetker]

What are some of the recordings of note that Walter played on? I think he produced “The Shadows On The Wall” sung by Bobby Lord, that was released in the mid 1960’s and had great steel through out. Maybe it was him in the record too?

[Donny Hinson]

What are some of the recordings of note that Walter played on? I think he produced “The Shadows On The Wall” sung by Bobby Lord, that was released in the mid 1960’s and had great steel through out. Maybe it was him in the record too?

Walter was one of the pioneers of steel guitar in country music. He played on a lot of Patsy Cline's last recordings, most notably her final version of "Crazy". But you didn't hear him very much in all those recordings because Patsy was one of the artists that ushered in the "Country-politan Sound" in the 1960's, and they were trying to expand the audience for country music by severely limiting the pedal steel guitar and adding lush string sections. His 1950's stuff with Jimmie Dickens' "We Could" and "Take Me As I Am", along with many others, give the best examples of his early playing, and he later recorded one popular pedal steel instrumental called "Hi Boots". Here's links to those recordings:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JmNvEbIEgw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71nHmPErdUI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2-d3vzw6Oc