Are there any good pedal steel sims out there?

[Frank Prince]

Maybe something like a guitar synth or VG88 with pedal assignment to emulate some levers and pedals?

[Wilbo26]

Slide + Digitech Whammy?

[Cheese Grits]

I saw the guitarist from Sodajerk getting a pretty convincing pedal steel tone out of his guitar, a slide, maybe a compressor (probably slammed to the gills) and a volume pedal.

[Lanefair]

There's loads of ways you could program the pitch shifters, harmonisers and pitch bend effects on a boss GT-8. You could use the expression pedal to bend notes, vibrato notes, do things with the harmoniser etc.

[Funky Chowder]

Some good suggestions in terms of gear here. Also, you can get alot of mileage by clever use of the volume and tone knobs in conjunction with bends and double-stops. It'll be hard to replicate every exact nuance, but you can get pretty close.

[Roy Brooks]

Listen to alot of pedal steel players. Work on your bending. Maybe a little compression, a really clean tone, and a little reverb might help too. But it is all about the bending.

[Funky Chowder]

Also, clever use of slide in conjunction with alternate tunings opens up even more possibilities.

[Roy Brooks]

Slide doesn't really sound much like pedal steel. If you watch steel players they aren't really doing alot of sliding. They are usually holding the bar in one place for awhile while using the pedals and knee levers to raise or lower pitches. You will hear alot of oblique bends in pedal steel, where two or more strings are played at the same time but one or more is stationary and one or more is bent.

[Funky Chowder]

Slide doesn't really sound much like pedal steel. If you watch steel players they aren't really doing alot of sliding. They are usually holding the bar in one place for awhile while using the pedals and knee levers to raise or lower pitches. You will hear alot of oblique bends in pedal steel, where two or more strings are played at the same time but one or more is stationary and one or more is bent.

 

 

True, I hear you. Still, I think it might depend on what kind of pedal steel style you're going for. For instance, some guys are more comfortable using their slants rather than using the pedals or levers. Granted, at some point, one might think, "Well, why not just use a lapsteel?", but different strokes and all that.

 

Anyways, didn't want to detract from the discussion. There are alot of options, including manipulating your tuners if you really wanted to go crazy.

[MorePaul]

I think Roy and Chowder bring up good points in that pedal steel is a signifigantly altered beast from other steel/slide instruments (and Chowder does bring up that point of 'a PS where you ain't using pedals is an expensive lapsteel' )

I'd suggest hitting up Mike "strningman" Perlowin for advice -- he's a hot pedal steel guy (he's the guy that did the Stravinsky on PS CD) and I believe he also uses things like a variax -- so he might be able to give you some insight in terms of pulling that stuff off


On the mechanical side -- hipshot makes "string bender" products that can help give you some of that flava

[Frank Prince]

I appreciate the comments about slide and string bending and b-benders and all, but what I'm really looking for is something where E9 and C6 tuning can be set up and expression pedals can emulate pedals and levers for the full pedal steel chord effect.

Thanks for the replies, though. Keep 'em coming.

[sethlover]

Slide + Digitech Whammy?

 

 

I would agree 100%.

[sethlover]

Also a EH Deluxe Memory Man with a EH Hotfoot does very much the same thing.

[theweight]

Guyatone Slow Volume or a BYOC Slow Gear Clone will help you with the volume swells too.

[MorePaul]

I appreciate the comments about slide string bending and b-benders and all, but what I'm really looking for is something where E9 and C6 tuning can be set up and expression pedals can emulate pedals and levers for the full pedal steel chord effect. Thanks for the replies, though. Keep 'em coming.

if you aren't going to go the mechanical route (string benders) then you are most probably going to have to go hex processing which limits your options VG series processors (or GK compatible synths)...potentially there might be something in the variax line, but I'm not familiar with extended/adaptive functionality there

outside of that, I *suppose* you could use a hex pickup and a panner type box (there were a couple of guitar like thisback in the day, I think Hamer had one) to selectively route some string to a pitch shifter effect

but that's still going to be rather limiting