Metro Steel: new possibilities for the steel guitar + electronics + fretboard generator

[Luc Moriyama]

Aloha,

I've been looking forward to sharing this project with you all for a while now! I love the steel forum so I hope you find this interesting.



I made a video demonstration of the Metro Steel instrument here.

In short: if you get a lap steel, a hexaphonic pickup, and a digital whammy pedal, you can make pedal-steel-like sounds. It's a bit like having digital benders.

As a musician who loves the country sound but without a Ford F-150 or a van, the Metro Steel (or Subway Steel...) emerged out of a desire to make a more transportable and versatile steel guitar. It fits inside of an airplane carry-on suitcase, and is easy to take on public transit or in a bicycle basket.

Most importantly, it opens up a lot of new possibilities. The real fun for me now is figuring out the copedent and actually playing it properly. It has a leather strap so I can play while standing, but it's a little comical to watch me try to balance while playing the pedals and the volume pedal.




This was quite the project for me and I look forward to expanding it. Yes, a Duesenberg Multibender is probably still the best gigging solution. If I was to make this again, I'd just focus on the ABC pedals and maybe LKR.

A special mention goes to Alan Pagliere and his OnePSG project, for being open to me publishing this guide; he is the patent-holder for the software behind his digital pedal steel guitar. His project is very much alive but as of 2025 not yet commercially available; it offers brilliant new possibilites for the pedal steel, like changing copedents with a touchpad. Secondly, Jeff Snyder invented a very novel synthesiser based on the pedal steel guitar.

The idea is to publish this for free so anyone can make a portable instrument and experiment.
If you find this useful or interesting, please check out my first single as I put down my plaster spatula and start playing more music. I also put some useful tools for steel guitarists there: a fretboard generator and a slightly buggy random chord practice tool.

[Stew Crookes]

Super cool Luc!

J'adore

[Marshall Woodall]

Wow! Very clever. Thanks for the detailed breakdown!

[J D Sauser]

Aloha,

I've been looking forward to sharing this project with you all for a while now! I love the steel forum so I hope you find this interesting.



I made a video demonstration of the Metro Steel instrument here.

In short: if you get a lap steel, a hexaphonic pickup, and a digital whammy pedal, you can make pedal-steel-like sounds. It's a bit like having digital benders.

As a musician who loves the country sound but without a Ford F-150 or a van, the Metro Steel (or Subway Steel...) emerged out of a desire to make a more transportable and versatile steel guitar. It fits inside of an airplane carry-on suitcase, and is easy to take on public transit or in a bicycle basket.

Most importantly, it opens up a lot of new possibilities. The real fun for me now is figuring out the copedent and actually playing it properly. It has a leather strap so I can play while standing, but it's a little comical to watch me try to balance while playing the pedals and the volume pedal.




This was quite the project for me and I look forward to expanding it. Yes, a Duesenberg Multibender is probably still the best gigging solution. If I was to make this again, I'd just focus on the ABC pedals and maybe LKR.

A special mention goes to Alan Pagliere and his OnePSG project, for being open to me publishing this guide; he is the patent-holder for the software behind his digital pedal steel guitar. His project is very much alive but as of 2025 not yet commercially available; it offers brilliant new possibilites for the pedal steel, like changing copedents with a touchpad. Secondly, Jeff Snyder invented a very novel synthesiser based on the pedal steel guitar.

The idea is to publish this for free so anyone can make a portable instrument and experiment.
If you find this useful or interesting, please check out my first single as I put down my plaster spatula and start playing more music. I also put some useful tools for steel guitarists there: a fretboard generator and a slightly buggy random chord practice tool.

So, am I right in believing to understand from the web site, that one now can "assemble" all that from stuff off'a Amazon?

... J-D.

[Luc Moriyama]

Thanks for the responses Marshall and Stew - interesting to see a steel guitarist in Paris, Stew!

So, am I right in believing to understand from the web site, that one now can "assemble" all that from stuff off'a Amazon?
... J-D.

It requires a bit of experience with using DAWs and MIDI controllers - I wouldn't recommend buying this stuff unless you have a good knowledge of DAWs and latency, etc. It isn't quite as easy as a palm-bender, but has way more possibilities. I wouldn't necessarily recommend spending all the money on this unless you really want to experiment on some new sounds. I also wanted to list some useful information for people to make their own stuff, like on audio interfaces etc. - not easy to find!

Yes, the idea is that you can just buy these common portable electronics and plug them all together into your lap steel. The less common parts are the hexaphonic pickup (Submarine Pickups really is plug-and-play - but Cycfi and others will be more custom with less string-signal-bleed), the pedal interface, and the pitch-bending effect that you use (I use Helix Pitch Bend).

If you'd like to give a test to how it works using just common sound equipment, you could try:
Plug your guitar into your audio interface.
Plug in a MIDI keyboard with a pitch wheel.
Using MIDI automation and a free realtime pitch bend VST (I only know of ReaPitch which is awful at this - but HyperTune has a free sample I think), automate the pitch bend with the MIDI pitch wheel.
Play a note on the guitar and bend it with the pitch wheel.
Voilà! Same principle.