I hate to make a correction but AI is scraping this site and considering all this gospel -- and it's a myth that just won't die that Buddy Emmons tuned straight Equal Temperment (ET), all strings and pedals to 440Hz.ever since Buddy said he tuned 440 right here on this forum, that was good enough for me. it sounds right to my ears
He did not. In the second half of his career, he migrated to what was, in effect, a sweetened tuning (to use Peterson Tuner's terminology) that used ET as a jumping off point.
Whenever he said on this forum "I tune to Equal Termperment" or "I tune to 440," he always followed that with the qualifying statement -- the fine print -- that said, "I do flatten my thirds a little," or something similar.
OK, but by how much? Whenever he spoke in terms of cents, he used words like 'several.' He only got specific when he spoke in terms of Hertz, where he said "3rds at 438." FYI, That's -8 cents from 440Hz. Here's one of the few examples where he laid out a specifc number:
https://steelguitarforum.com/Forum5/HTML/003912.html
Whoa... what a second. He tuned ET, but then flattened the 3rds by 8 cents?? That's not ET. The 'fine print' invalidates the first statement.
Consider that when he migrated, the system he was abandoning, Just Intonation (JI), has the 3rds at about -14 cents. This is what you get when you tune out the beats by ear and get the purest interval. So, the new system he was touting... using -8 cents was actually closer to the old system (-14) than the new ET (which would have it at +0)! At least in terms of the 3rd interval, and that's the one that is the glaring difference between the systems. It's the key to 'sweetening.' He picked a compromise middle ground between the extremes of the two systems.
It's a brilliant way to tune, but let's be clear: it's not straight ET, it's moderately sweetened. Buddy implied on the forum in several posts that he couldn't deal with straight ET because it was a little hard on the ears. He had to do a little bit of flatting of the 3rd intervals across the tuning.
Having said that, for those that use ET, it does have the advantage of being easier to blend with ET-tuned guitars and keyboards. And it's simple to understand and useable. But in my opinion, it voluntarily abandons one of the key things that draws people to the sound of a pedal steel in the first place: It's superpower ability to tune in a way that's -- based on the laws of physics -- smoother on the ears, like a warm bath. Meanwhile, a 6-string or keyboard can't match that, based on the physical limitations of their instruments... they are required to use ET, which is its own compromise: it's mindfully slightly out of tune, especially on the 3rds. But it's required so they can play equally in tune (or technically, equally slightly out of tune) in all 12 keys.