The
pedal steel guitar is a type of
electric guitar that uses a metal slide (the "steel") to intonate or shorten the length of the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. Unlike other types of
steel guitar, it uses foot pedals and knee levers to affect the pitch, hence its name. The instrument is supported horizontally on legs, with the strings facing up towards the player, and is typically plucked with thumbpick and fingers or (two or three)
fingerpicks. The pedals are mounted on a cross bar below the body and the knee levers extend from the bottom of the guitar's body and are used to change the pitch (higher and lower) of its strings in the process of the guitar being played; the action of the pedals may either be fixed, or may be configurable by the player to select which strings are affected by the pedals. The pedal steel, with its smooth
portamenti, bending chords and complex riffs, is one of the most recognizable and characteristic instruments of
American country music.
While there are some fairly standard pedal assignments, many advanced players devise their own setups, called copedents. The range of copedents that can be set up varies considerably from guitar to guitar. Aftermarket modifications to make additional copedents possible are common.
The pedal steel was developed from the console steel guitar and lap steel guitar. Like the console steel, a pedal steel may have multiple necks, but the pedals make even a single-neck pedal steel a far more versatile instrument than any multiple-neck console steel.
A pedal steel guitar is typically rectangular in shape, and has no specific resonant chamber or conventional guitar body but only one or more guitar necks. These are mounted on a stand and equipped with foot pedals and usually knee levers. Many models feature two necks, the nearest to the player most often using a C6 tuning and the farther away using an E9 tuning. The most common configuration is one or two necks of ten strings each, but eight-string and twelve-string necks are also popular, and even models with 14 strings on one neck can be found. Three-neck instruments are less common than those with one or two, but are not unknown.
