Pedal steel guitar

The pedal steel guitar is a string instrument mounted horizontally on a frame and played while seated. The player typically plucks the strings with the dominant hand while pressing and moving a steel bar against them with the other hand. The instrument has no resonant chamber; its sound is transmitted by an electric pickup to an amplifier. Like all steel guitars, the pedal steel can produce smooth glissandi (sliding notes) and controlled vibrato, expressive techniques akin to the human singing voice.

What distinguishes the pedal steel from pre-existing lap steels is a set of foot pedals and knee levers that raise or lower the pitch of selected strings and will allow this to occur while other notes are still sounding. The mechanism was developed by U.S. inventors in the 1940s and 1950s to extend the instrument's harmonic capabilities. It allowed players to form chords and voicings that were previously unavailable on a steel guitar, and it produced a distinctive sound that became a defining element of American country music in the latter half of the twentieth century.

The first No. 1 Billboard country recording to feature pedal steel was Webb Pierce's 1953 song, "Slowly", on which Bud Isaacs demonstrated a novel technique of pushing a pedal to change pitches within a chord while existing notes in it were still sounding. The popularity of this unique harmonic motif influenced lap steel guitarists to switch to pedal-equipped instruments.

Innovations by Buddy Emmons, Jimmy Day, Zane Beck, Paul Bigsby, and others established many of the mechanical and tuning conventions used on the modern pedal steel guitar. Although most closely associated with country music, the pedal steel has also been adopted in diverse genres, including western swing, jazz, rock, pop and Sacred Steel.