Steel Pedal article
The Ultimate Guide to Steel Pedals
Part slide guitar, part mechanical linkage system — here's what a steel pedal guitar actually is, how it works, and where its crying sound came from.
Search for a "steel pedal guitar" and you'll land squarely on one of the strangest, most expressive instruments in country music — most players call it the pedal steel guitar, but the two phrasings point at exactly the same thing. It's played flat on its back, worked with a steel bar, three fingerpicks, both feet and both knees, and it makes a sound nothing else quite manages: that smooth, crying slide between notes. Here's what it actually is, how it works, and where it came from.
What Makes a Steel Pedal Guitar Different
Unlike a standard guitar, the strings on one are never fretted with the fingers. Instead, a polished steel bar slides across the strings in the left hand, while the right hand picks with a thumbpick and two fingerpicks. That alone would just make it a lap steel. What turns it into a pedal steel is a set of foot pedals and knee levers connected by rods to "changer" mechanisms under the strings — press one, and it raises or lowers the pitch of specific strings while the note is still ringing.
That's the trick that makes the instrument sound almost vocal: a chord can shift internally, mid-note, without the player picking again. It's a genuinely different way of making music from a fretted instrument, and it takes real coordination between the bar, the picking hand, the feet and the knees to do it smoothly.
A Short History: From Hawaii to Nashville
The technique traces back to Hawaiian steel guitar in the late 19th century, where players laid the instrument across their lap and used a hard object to slide across the strings rather than fretting them conventionally. That Hawaiian sound spread through vaudeville, country and Western swing over the following decades as lap steels and console steels.
The pedal mechanism itself developed gradually through the 1940s, with Gibson's Electraharp and big-band steel guitarist Alvino Rey's mechanically assisted pitch-changing systems among the early attempts. But the moment that changed everything came in 1953, when steel player Bud Isaacs used a pedal to raise two strings while they were still sustaining on Webb Pierce's recording of "Slowly." That single technique — changing pitch mid-note — became the defining sound of modern country steel guitar.
Shot Jackson and Buddy Emmons founded Sho-Bud shortly afterwards, and Emmons in particular refined the pedal functions and tunings that became the modern Nashville standard. Along with players like Jimmy Day, Lloyd Green and John Hughey, they built the vocabulary that pedal steel guitarists still learn today.
E9 and C6: The Two Main Systems
Most modern instruments are built around one or both of two tuning systems, each suited to different music.
| System | Best suited to | Character |
|---|---|---|
| E9 | Country, honky-tonk, modern Nashville | The classic "crying" pedal-steel sound |
| C6 | Western swing, jazz, instrumental playing | Broader harmony, sixth chords, dominant colours |
Many players start on a single-neck E9 instrument, since it's the more portable and typically the easier system to approach first. Some players eventually move to a double-neck instrument carrying both E9 and C6, though that comes with extra weight, cost and mechanical complexity.
How It's Actually Played
Playing one means coordinating several things at once: the bar's position, which string groupings (called grips) you're picking, which pedals are pressed, which knee levers are engaged, and the swell of a separate volume pedal that shapes each note's attack. None of this happens instantly — most players start by learning to sustain a single chord and slowly engage one pedal, listening closely to how the pitch moves inside the chord, before trying to combine movements. If you're just starting out, our beginner's guide to the steel pedal guitar walks through this in a friendlier, more encouraging way.
Where You'll Actually Hear One
It's most closely tied to classic honky-tonk and Nashville country, but it turns up far more widely than that: Western swing, Bakersfield country, gospel, Americana, alt-country, folk-rock and even jazz and experimental music all make use of it. It's also found a home in some international styles, including Nigerian popular music, proving the sound travels well beyond its Nashville reputation.
Buying or Choosing One
If you're weighing up which system, neck configuration and price point actually suits you, our complete buyer's guide covers exactly that, and our roundup of the best options for the money breaks down what each price tier realistically gets you. And whenever you do buy, it's worth a quick read of common mistakes buyers make first.
The Bottom Line
A steel pedal guitar is a genuinely unusual instrument — part slide guitar, part mechanical linkage system, entirely its own thing to learn. But that odd combination of bar, pedals and knee levers is exactly what gives it a voice no fretted instrument can quite reach, which is why it's held onto its place at the heart of country music for seventy years and counting.
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