A type of electric guitar that uses a metal slide to stop the strings, rather than fingers on strings as with a conventional guitar. The pedal steel is placed horizontally on a stand and is typically plucked with fingerpicks. The pedals and knee levers are used to change the pitch of the strings while being played. The action of the pedals may either be fixed, or may be configurable by the player to select which strings are affected by the pedals. The pedal steel, with its smooth portamenti, bending chords and complex riffs, is one of the most recognisable and characteristic instruments of American country music.

The pedal steel was developed from the console steel guitar and lap steel guitar. Like the console steel, a pedal steel may have multiple necks, but the pedals make even a single-neck pedal steel a far more versatile instrument.

A pedal steel guitar is typically rectangular in shape, and has no resonant chamber or conventional guitar body but only one or more guitar necks. These are mounted on a stand and equipped with foot pedals and usually knee levers. Many models feature 2 necks, the nearest to the player most often using a C6 tuning and the farther away using an E9 tuning. The most common configuration is 1 or 2 necks of 10 strings each, but 8-string and 12-string necks are also popular, and even models with 14 strings on one neck can be found. 3-neck instruments are less common, but are not unknown.

The pedal steel guitar is the latest development in a story that started with the invention of a technique of playing used in Hawaii in the late 1800s, where the strings were not fretted in the normal manner by the left hand, but rather by sliding an object such as a comb or the back edge of a knife blade along the strings above the neck of the guitar. This became very popular in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. To increase the volume of the guitar, a resonator cone was added by the Doypeyra Brothers to create the resophonic guitar.

By the 1930s, the hollow guitar body was abandoned for a flat slab of wood or metal and the addition of an electric pickup - this was the lap steel guitar. It was the first electric guitar to achieve commercial success. Several pioneering manufacturers of the electric guitar were first famous for their work on the then more popular electric steel guitar, among them Rickenbacker and Fender.

The limitations of chord shapes imposed by the use of the steel slide led to the addition of multiple necks, resulting in the console steel guitar. Gibson used a system of pedals to change the tuning of the strings on one of their console steels in 1940. This instrument, the Electraharp, had a cluster of pedals radiating from its left rear leg that operated similarly to the pedals on a harp.

In the early 1950s, various custom pedal steel guitars were developed that featured pedals mounted to a rack between the front legs of the instrument which could be used to change the pitch of the strings. Other variants included knee levers added to console steel guitars with a similar purpose.

In 1957, Bud Emmons formed the Sho-Bud company, the first pedal steel guitar manufacturer. Sho-Bud guitars incorporated all the innovations that had taken place during the 1950s, including a 3rd pedal, up to 4 knee levers and 10 strings on a single neck.

A performer typically sits on a stool or seat at the instrument. The right foot is usually used to operate a volume pedal. The left foot is used to press one or more of the instrument's foot pedals. The knees are positioned under the instrument's body so that by moving them left, right or even vertically, they can push levers that hang from underneath it.

The strings are positioned high above the neck of the instrument. Rather than being pressed to a fret on the neck, the player's left hand holds a polished metal bar called the steel which is slid up and down the on the strings. The right hand plucks the strings, usually with a set of thumb and finger picks.