page_title: Pedal steel guitar
section_title: Console steel becomes pedal steel
hierarchical_section_title: Pedal steel guitar / Console steel becomes pedal steel
caption_attribution_description: English: Bigsby pedal steel guitar
context_page_description: The pedal steel guitar is a console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all steel guitars, it can play unlimited glissandi and deep vibrati—characteristics it shares with the human voice. Pedal steel is most commonly associated with American country music.
  Pedals and knee levers were added to a steel guitar in the 1950s, allowing the performer to play a major scale without moving the bar and also to push the pedals while striking a chord, making passing notes slur or bend up into harmony with existing notes. The latter creates a unique sound that has been popular in country and western music— a sound not previously possible on a non-pedal steel guitar of any type.
  From its first use in Hawaii in the 19th century, the steel guitar sound became popular in the United States in the first half of the 20th century and spawned a family of instruments designed specifically to be played with the guitar in a horizontal position, also known as "Hawaiian-style".
context_section_description: The expense of building multiple necks on the same instrument made them unaffordable for most players, and a more sophisticated solution was needed. At this point, the goal was simply to create a pedal that would change the pitch of all the strings at once to emulate a second neck. In 1939, a guitar called the "Electradaire" featured a pedal controlling a solenoid, triggering an electrical apparatus to change the tension on the strings. This was not successful. That same year, Alvino Rey worked with a machinist to design pedals to change the pitch of strings but was without success. The Harlan Brothers of Indianapolis created the "Multi-Kord" with a universal pedal that could fairly easily be configured to adjust the pitch of any or all strings, but was extremely hard to push when tensioning all strings at once.
  Gibson Guitar Company introduced the "Electraharp" in 1940, which featured pedals radially oriented from a single axis at the instrument's left rear leg.
   The most successful pedal system from the various contenders was designed about 1948 by Paul Bigsby, a motorcycle shop foreman and racer who also invented the commercially successful Spanish guitar vibrato tailpiece. Bigsby put pedals on a rack between the two front legs of the steel guitar. The pedals operated a mechanical linkage to apply tension to raise the pitch of the strings.
  This is not as straightforward as it might sound. The pedal mechanism itself has to have its own tuning system. As an example, assume the guitar is tuned perfectly using the familiar tuning pegs easily visible on the guitar. Then assume that the player pushes a pedal and the result is out of tune, but when he releases the pedal, it is in tune again. Underneath the guitar, a system of levers, springs and long rods exists. At the player's right, on the end of the instrument, is an opening that exposes the ends of the rods, each representing a string. The player fits a small hex wrench that looks like a radio knob onto the rod controlling the out-of-tune note. While holding the pedal down, he turns the knob either direction to fine-tune the pedal in a process completely independent of the original tuning. Bigsby built guitars incorporating his design for the foremost steel players of the day, including Speedy West, Noel Boggs, and Bud Isaacs, but Bigsby was a one-man operation working out of his garage at age 56, and not capable of keeping up with demand. One of Bigsby's first guitars was used on "Candy Kisses" in 1949 by Eddie Kirk. The second model Bigsby made went to Speedy West, who used it extensively.
caption: Bigsby steel
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