<SMALL>You get the sustain with the volume pedal.</SMALL>
I see your point about sometimes wanting extra signal level for sustain as a note trails off, especially on a slow tune, and sometimes also use this technique. My preferred solution, using a tube amp, is to increase the gain/volume in the amp or effects, and not overwind the pickup.
On old amps with fixed gain and no effects, I agree with you that options to increase the gain were limited. But why is a hot pickup needed on an amp with variable gain, as almost all modern design amps have? Just raise the amp gain, get instant room on the volume pedal. I think the bigger issue here is that modern solid-state amps are designed around the hotter-wound pickups. I don't like the sound of lighter-wound pickups through these amps either. Maybe some guys like their Tele through a Session 400, etc., but nobody I play with would tolerate that.
<SMALL>But cutting back on windings so you can play with the volume pedal floored doesn't make sense to me.</SMALL>
I didn't argue for playing with the volume pedal floored all, or even most, of the time. But on a faster/louder tune, I prefer to have the volume pedal set to my max useful volume, so I don't accidentally blow anyone away in the heat of battle. My bandmates appreciate a hard-limiter on the louder tunes. The point is that I want to
choose how to set it, and not have it forced on me by circumstance.
<SMALL>Forgive me, but that sounds like a guitar player not using appropriate pedal steel technique.</SMALL>
As I said, I often play both guitar and steel at the same time, and need to make it work for both. I also was not aware that there was such a strict orthodoxy in technique. Now, I admit, I've played steel for only a few years, and I don't claim to 'know it all', not by a long shot. I'm listening carefully here for new ideas.
<SMALL>So cutting back on the windings to get improved tube amp sound might make sense.</SMALL>
Well, these old tube amps were designed around a more lightly wound, lower-output pickup, but this is strictly a matter of personal taste. I prefer it, but that doesn't make it "correct".
But remember, in my application, I'm specifically trying to make this work with my lighter-wound guitar pickups, through the same tube amp. These are usually Teles or Strats (pickups wound to around 6.5-7 KOhm with a narrow aperture), or jazzy tones from a Gibson Humbucker (wound to around 7.8 KOhms with a wider aperture). Both of these are quite a bit lower-output than the typical PSG pickup, and both sound great for their given purpose through an old Fender tube amp, to my tastes.
With most of my hotly-wound steel pickups, I currently either need to bring separate amps for guitar and steel, or use something like a Pod, which effectively gives me different amp models and EQ settings at the touch of a button. It's not just the pickup output, but the overall tone. Amps also have a 'voice', and need to be matched to the 'voice' of the pickup.
I'd prefer to just be able to plug guitar and steel straight into a Dual Showman Reverb + JBL D/K-130 cab for a louder gig, or a tricked-out Deluxe Reverb with an EV SRO for a low-volume gig, and have everything sound fine. Except for my BMI with a Lawrence 705, they sound muddy no matter what I do. With the 705, I needed to lower the pickup, as Ricky Davis suggests, but it sounds clean and clear. My Sierras have 3-way Danny Shields pickups, and the light setting helps, but is still drives the tube amps too hard and doesn't have as much clarity as I'd like. I can tweak any of these amps to sound good for guitar but not steel, or vice versa. This is Hobson's choice, and I think it's possible to do better.
<SMALL>... any loss of highs because of extra windings on the pickup doesn't seem to be of much concern to me. However, loss of definition in the lows is some concern.</SMALL>
I agree that high end is not the issue for me either. High end is easy to come by, and steel guitar can get shrill easily, but it's the overall frequency response and "Q" factor that I'm talking about. With traditional pickup design, overwinding affects both high and low end clarity adversely, to my ears.
<SMALL>It's hard for me to imagine that anyone ever increased pickup windings to get more distortion-sustain on steel.</SMALL>
I don't think anybody has argued that here (except perhaps for blues and rock playing). We all agree that pushing an amp into distortion is not desirable for the clean steel sounds most of us want. I argued above that a higher signal level, produced by high-output pickups, pushes solid-state amps into their compressor/limiter region, which does increase sustain without harmonic distortion. I don't really know if that's the reason for the pickup change, but it did seem to occur around the time most people switched from tube to solid-state amps.
<SMALL>I don't think most steelers would be happy with that sound from their modern pedal steel.</SMALL>
I entirely agree that there are many ways to approach this design problem. I like my Session 500 just fine with hot steel pickups, but not guitar. I'm not against any other approach, this is highly personal. Perhaps most steelers wouldn't be happy with the Fender 400 sound. Myself, I like the Fender sound (but not mechanics) for many things. I think Bob has a good idea here. If I can just find someone to make me up a somewhat lower-output, coil-tapped pickup for my S-14U, I think I'd use it a lot more.
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