In the late 19th century, Spanish guitars were introduced in the Hawaiian Islands by European sailors and … See more

Hawaiian lap steel guitars were not loud enough to compete with other instruments, a problem that many inventors were trying to remedy. In Los Angeles in the 1920s, a steel guitar player named George Beauchamp saw … See more

The first lap steels had a smaller body, but still retained a guitar-like shape. Instrument makers rapidly began making them into a rectangular block of wood with an electric pickup, the precursor of the pedal steel. According t… See more

The next problem to be dealt with was the need to play with different voicings on the same guitar; i.e., the way the strings are tuned. The only way to accomplish this at the time was the addition of a duplicate neck and st… See more

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 … See more

In 1953, Bud Isaacs received one of Bigsby's new creations, a double-neck steel which featured pedals to change the pitch of only two strings. Isaacs was the first to push the pedal while notes were still sounding. … See more