Experimenting with this excellent emulator set up as pedal steel/Telecaster (in guitar rig 5) using the Mix dial to switch between the two in real time. Problem is that the pedal steel is not sounding as it should. I’ve tried legato and pitch bend but it never sounds correct. Any tips?
Pedal steel guitar is typically used in a song as a background instrument and lead instrument.
As a background instrument a pedal steel guitar player typically will play hold chords and slides that act as pads in a song. The player will use a foot controlled volume pedal to create a swell at a chord beginning. The volume pedal will be used to create a sustained hold and either the volume pedal or palm mute is used to end the chord.
As a lead instrument a player typically either plays all notes or a mixture of notes and chords. Notes follow the song melody or zoom off to wherever the player desires. Notes generally have a fast attack and a percussive feel to them (Steel Guitar Rag for example) or a long ringing sound (Sleepwalk). The chords are generally not held for very long and are sometimes lightly palm muted.
Some Telecaster players achieve the bending, steel guitar, string sound by using a modified Telecaster. The Telecaster is modified with a mechanical linkage called a b-bender. The b-bender raises the pitch of the b string from b to c. The b-bender linkage terminates at the front guitar strap button. This allows the player to control the linkage by moving the guitar neck up and down. That not only sounds cool but looks cool!
I have been trying this with my lapsteel with the same results. It seems as if the initial strum or pick creates a note or chord, but MG2 does not track the slides. I only found this out yesterday, so still experimenting. I tried infinite sustain and no noise gate with bends 12 enabled . I think some sort of continuous retrigger of some sort would be needed or a bow to reactivate the sampling. Moving my slide back and forth across the strings almost got it to track, but too difficult to play anything doing that.