Metro Steel (Pardessus), 2025.

This guide explains how what the Metro Steel is and how to build your own. Last updated August 2025. NOTE: This guide is under construction and should be finished by September. I'd love for you to share it, but not yet (I'm trying to make it coincide with putting out a single)!

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On the steel guitar

The invention of the steel guitar is credited to the Hawaiian Joseph Kekuku. While walking along the train tracks on a plantation, he picked up a metal bolt and placed it against his guitar strings; this became the famous Hawaiian lap steel sound. Later, motorcycle-machinists like Paul Bigsby tried their hand at lutherie and added pedals to the steel guitar to bend the pitches of the strings. This later became an essential part of the country sound in the hands of musicians like Buddy Emmons.

The pedal steel guitar often resembles a string trio more than an electric guitar. Unlike most bowed string instruments, however, it can move between chords with perfect intonation. I was previously drawn to the viola da gamba for its ability to play chordal passages, as in this piece by Carl Friedrich Abel. However, unlike a single viola da gamba, baryton, or guitar, the pedal steel can glissando across several notes simultaneously and achieve contrapuntal motion. The only other instruments to my knowledge capable of such precise contrapuntal slides are the ROLI Seaboard keyboard and to a lesser extent the Harpejji. With its re-entrant tuning and ornaments available by stepping on a lever, the pedal steel feels like the electric apotheosis of the weirdness and ingenuity of string instruments.

As any pedal steel guitarist could tell you, however, it is a cumbersome instrument to transport. My GFI setup weighs about 25 kilograms/55 pounds and requires wheeling around a huge suitcase, which must be assembled and disassembled for every performance.

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.

The Metro Steel is not a pedal steel guitar or proprietary system: you simply attach a hexaphonic pickup to a lap steel, plug it into a guitar amp simulator, modulate a few pitch-bend parameters with a MIDI controller, and you can start making pedal-steel like sounds.

There are two other pedal steel-related projects worth keeping an eye on. Firstly, I'd like to thank Alan Pagliere, inventor of the OnePSG, 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.

Metro Steel on a budget
An old lap steel (or a $100 Harley Benton)
Behringer UMC1820 audio interface ($200)
A hexaphonic pickup by Submarine Pickups ($300)
Audiofront Expression Quattro pedal interface ($129)
3x Roland DP-10 sustain pedals ($180)
Some cables and other accessories
Your laptop
Reaper or other DAW
Hypertune ($50) or Line6 Helix ($399)
Note: This page contains affiliate links, so I receive a small commission if you buy using these links.

Metro Steel

The Metro Steel body is essentially a lap steel guitar, which is fortunately among the easiest string instruments to build. It is possible to convert an existing lap steel into a Metro Steel - in which case, you can skip this section and proceed to installing a hexaphonic pickup.

The form of the Metro Steel is inspired by the pardessus viola da gamba or viola d'amore. The holes conveniently hide the electric cabling, and recall the 'Flaming Sword of Islam' (otherwise known as C- or F-holes) of those instruments.

You can download a vector file of my first 'pardessus' Metro Steel (July 2025) here. The guitar itself is about 50cm/20 inches long and weighs about a 1 kilogram/2 pounds. You may want to make the rounded part slightly larger, so it can sit more comfortably against your stomach.

The build is very simple: a piece of wood, tuners, a bridge and nut, a pickup, and a fingerboard.

The type of wood you choose most likely has minimal impact on the sound, but it should be a guitar-quality dried hardwood to avoid warping. I bought mine from Madinter (EU), milled it with a CNC, and then sanded it and finished it with an elegant French polish (shellac).

I recommend this Chinese headless tuning system: it is much more affordable and compact than its competitors. You might need to adjust the screw in the tuning mechanism, but my instrument stays in tune even better than my GFI pedal steel.

The bridge and nut help keep the intonation pure. I constructed the bridge with a piece of wood and a nail. Otherwise, I suggest these roller nuts. A rounded or rolling surface seems to sound best, with the most sustain.

I have created a 🎸 fretboard generator specifically for steel guitars. You can then print it out, apply it with an acetone transfer, or laser cut it out of wood.

I've also added guitar strap buttons and a bracing block underneath so it can be played while standing. It is, however, much easier to play sitting down.

Finger picks are a good idea; your right hand plucks considerably closer to the pickup than on a pedal steel, so your fingers make bassy, noisy thumps. I placed the pickup close to the bridge to avoid these thumps.

For strings, you can use a standard set of D'Addario pedal steel strings, I like the tension to be around 18lbs per string as I find it has a richer tone, slightly under the standard.

Hexaphonic pickups

A hexaphonic pickup has 6 pickups and 6 guitar jacks: one for each string. Ideally, to create a pedal steel guitar, you'd want an octaphonic or decaphonic pickup.

I ordered a hexaphonic SubSix pickup from UK-based Submarine Pickups and I highly recommend it as it is ready-to-use out of the box - the owner is also very supportive. They don't offer 8- or 10-string pickups yet however unfortunately. You could of course buy two of them and build a steel guitar with up to 12-strings.

This website has some information on hexaphonic pickups more generally.

Alan Pagliere, inventor of the OnePSG, suggests Cycfi pickups and says the owner is very supportive and has even written a DSP processing library. The Nu multichannel pickups come in 8 or a custom number of strings! However, they are active pickups and thus require power.

Ubertar seems to make them in the US too, in more customisable formats.

Audio interfaces

One of the most important elements of this instrument is the audio interface, which connects analog signals to your computer. You will need an interface with 6+ inputs or with expandability (ADAT).

The signal coming out of a guitar pickup is unbalanced or instrument-level, and needs to be plugged into an instrument-level input. If an instrument-level signal is plugged into a balanced or line-level input, the sound is flat and noticeably bad, especially on clean steel guitar tones.

The easiest solution is to use an audio interface with 6+ instrument-level inputs, but there aren't many on the market. Alternatively, you can plug the instrument-level guitar signal into a DI box, which converts it into line-level signal, but you would need a DI box for each string.

When it comes to picking an audio interface, there are numerous reviews on Youtube, notably by Julian Krause. To save you a considerable amount of time, here are some of my own personal remarks, where 1) portability, 2) low latency, and 3) sound quality are the most important factors:

Behringer UMC1820 - Recommended. This is the clear budget choice, with 8 instrument-level inputs, but the sound seems to me to be rough, a bit noisy, and thin in the higher frequencies. I couldn't get the Behringer UMC1820 to work as an ADAT slave, but it is the clear budget choice if you are only buying one interface. Note that when you run your interface at 96k or higher sample rates, you can reduce the latency of your audio interface.

MOTU 8Pre or 8Pre-ES - Recommended. The sound is a noticeable upgrade from the UMC1820, and it can be found for a good price second-hand. I use mine as an ADAT slave, so even the more affordable Firewire version worked for me. Note: if you only have 1 ADAT input, you can't get all 8 inputs at 96k. 8 inputs + ADAT expansion.

RME Fireface UCX II - RME are supposed to have the best drivers and lowest latency. This looks interesting but expensive. It has 6 line-level and 2 instrument-level inputs, so you could run DI boxes for the other strings. No ADAT complications required; this is probably one of the most compact low-latency solutions.

RME Babyface - I haven't tried it, but it should work well with ADAT expansion. It is quite expensive, however, and I don't like the form factor and the lack of physical dials. 4 inputs + ADAT expansion.

SSL 12 - Great interface - you can turn off any annoying mixer functions, and even the headphone jacks can be used as line outputs. However, it has only 4 inputs, so you'll need to use the ADAT expansion slot, but this might not let you use 96k sample rate, so latency is higher than I'd like.

Audient id24 - Sounds great, but I was annoyed by the lack of level LEDs and that you need to turn the volume dial up every time you plug it in. Who thought that was a good idea? 2 inputs + ADAT expansion.

Zoom LiveTrak L-6 - I love how small it is, but I found it worked more like a mixer than an audio interface which was very frustrating, so it is not recommended. I would love a compact interface like this with 12 instrument/XLR inputs!

MOTU UltraLite MK5 - It looks good, but it has 6 line inputs in the back, not instrument inputs. You would need several DI boxes. If these were instrument inputs, it would have been perfect!

Tascam Model 12 - I haven't tested it, but it looks like it could work with its numerous instrument inputs. It's just too big in my opinion.

Tascam US-16x08 - It seems to have only 2 instrument inputs, so you'd need a lot of DI boxes.

Apollo 8p with Radial J48 DI boxes - Pete Roe of Submarine Pickups uses this setup and thinks it has the best quality. Thank you to Pete also for some of the suggestions on this list.

Pitch shifting plugins

Rather than mechanisms physically pulling the strings, the pitch of each string is adjusted individually by a digital whammy pedal.

The digital whammy plugins with the lowest latency and best sound quality are Line6 Helix pitch effects and the PolyChrome DSP Hypertune. The Line6 Helix has the added benefit of being a guitar amp simulator, but is considerably more expensive ($399). It may introduce 16-64 samples (0.36 to 1.45ms) of latency, but this is probably imperceptible.

The Hypertune does not appear to introduce any latency and is only $49, but the sound is slightly degraded. I recommend the Line6 Helix VST.

Plugins like ReaPitch seem to introduce far too much latency; Reaper Pitch Shifter 2 is okay, but not great quality.

It is worth noting that most pitch effects don't work well when they detect more than one string. There are several different Helix pitch effects: Pitch Wham is my favourite. Poly Wham works surprisingly well on several strings. You could use it to emulate a B pedal, for example, bringing both of your G# strings up to an A, possibly saving a bit of computing power/latency.

I imagine that PureData or MaxMSP aficionados could come up with an interesting pitch shifting solution for this instrument, but this is a bit too technical for what I have time or interest to do.

If you are a programmer, it may also be worth investigating Jeff Snyder's LEAF system to find better pitch-bending solutions.

Pedals

You will need 3 MIDI sustain pedals to imitate the ABC pedals. This is trickier than you might think: most sustain pedals only send a 0 (off) or 127 (on) signal, but ideally you want to have the full expressive range of 0 to 127 so things like half-pedaling are possible.

I've attached three Roland DP-10s together with screws and metal. These work well; they have the full dynamic range and have a sturdy construction. I've tried some other models:

Roland DP-10 - Recommended. The spring in it is slightly stronger than a pedal steel pedal, however, so they are a little hard to press. I fixed this by taking out the spring and cutting out one loop. I also suggest using a metal file to roughen the slippery surface of the pedals.

Korg PS-3 - Recommended. Note that these do NOT have the full expressive range, but are compact and cheap. You can make the on-off smoother via your pedal interface.

Generic Chinese budget brand three-in-one sustain pedal - No. Each pedal seems to send the same sustain signal.

M-Audio SP-2 - This is an on-off pedal. No expressive range. Side note: pedals like this can work in a pinch by smoothing out the signal in your DAW, but are far from ideal.

Kawai GFP-3 - Wrong connector! Oops.

Kawai F-10 H - It looks compact in photos, but is actually too wide.

Keith McMillen SoftStep 3 - Have not tried it; looks intriguing - could possibly replace all other pedals and the pedal interface. Of course it has the downside of not having physical pedals.

Sustain pedals usually have a 1/4" guitar jack. In order to convert this signal to one our computer can read, we need a pedal interface; I highly recommend the Audiofront Expression Quattro pedal interface ($129), which lets you convert the electronic signal of up to 4 pedals into different MIDI CCs, which can then control your digital effects.

The Audiofront Expression FAQ also has a list of functioning pedals.

You can also simulate a volume pedal with an expression pedal. I use a Dunlop Volume X Mini Pedal DVP4.

Copedent

The biggest limitations of this instrument are finding a pickup with 10 strings and an audio interface with 10 inputs. For this reason, my first version only has six strings. This requires some creative reimagining of the tuning/copedent you wish to play.

My Metro Steel uses the EF#G#BEG# strings, the heart of the E9. The easiest way to understand my copedent is by selecting it on my 🎸 fretboard generator.

The ABC, LKL, and LKR pedals function just as they do on an E9. The RKL pedal could also be called the Strings 1 & 2 pedal: it brings the G# and E down to F# and D#, essentially the inversion of the pedal steel RKL. This also lets you play the top 2 strings of the E9 when needed, which always confused me with their re-entrant tuning.

I'm still exploring what to do with the RKR pedal. For the moment, it brings strings the F# and E strings down to a D and B, or the pedal steel strings 9 & 10.

There are plenty of hacks and tricks to working more strings into an 8-input audio interface. Here's a copedent and wiring chart for simulating a 10 string E9 with 8 inputs, with only a couple minor imperfections. The merged strings can enter into a cheap passive mixer before entering the interface - and when adjusting their pitch, be sure to use a polyphonic pitch shifter like Helix Poly Wham.

Possibilities beyond the pedal steel

Experimentation is really at the heart of the pedal steel; musicians are required to explore and invent new tunings and copedents, and players like Pete Drake often explored new effects and textural combinations.

The Metro Steel opens up the pedal steel to new possibilities: when a pedal is pressed, for example, maybe an effect is applied along with the pitch? New physically impossible copedents can be invented: for example, a new pedal could bring one string up a minor third while bringing another down a major second. A certain pedal could bring the entire instrument down a fourth, or do the up-three-frets + A + LKL chord inversion for you.

This project uses digital audio. Here's another outlandish possibility: you could probably also make a relatively compact and totally analogue Metro Steel with a hexaphonic pickup, sustain pedals, and a lot of guitar whammy pedals with an expression input. In this video, Holly Carter and Submarine Pickups did something similar with EHX Pitchfork pedals.

This has been an introduction to the concepts and construction of the Metro Steel. I'm continuing to develop this instrument and will be making an 8-string version soon.

If you found this useful and would like to support my work, you can listen to my music here and/or make a donation or contact me for bookings.

Otherwise, you can follow my Instagram, sign up to my newsletter, or view my artist website.