Pedal Steel

An extremely expressive and playable pedal steel guitar, designed by Dimitris Plagiannis to focus on authentic performances and ease-of-use! This quintessential American instrument is capable of playing rich harmonies and sonorous leads simultaneously. Great for jazz, country, bluegrass and much more.

$179

$179

102 in stock

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    World-Class Support

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    Loyalty
    Program

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    World-Class
    Support

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    Loyalty
    Program

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    Authentic and
    Realistic Sounds

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    Deep Customization
    for Power Users

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    Authentic and
    Realistic Sounds

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    Deep Customization
    for Power Users

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    Inspiring
    Presets

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    Easy-to-Use
    Interface

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    Inspiring
    Presets

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    Easy-to-Use
    Interface

Audio Demos

  1. Emmylou (Dressed) First Aid Kit (mock-up by Dimitris Plagiannis) 0:29
  2. Dust Henning Nugel 2:33
  3. Half A Mind (Dressed) Roger Miller (mock-up by Dimitris Plagiannis) 0:51
  4. My Kind of Country (Dressed) Brad Jerkins 1:29
  5. Steely Jazz (Dressed) Dimitris Plagiannis 0:59
  6. Blue Christmas (Dressed) Billy Hayes & Jay W. Johnson (arr. Dimitris Plagiannis) 1:08
  7. Crying (Dressed) Dimitris Plagiannis 0:57
  8. Mojave Motel (Dressed) Christian Yoder 1:59
  9. Ashokan Farewell (Dressed) Jay Ungar (arr. Dimitris Plagiannis) 1:22
  10. Night Sky (Dressed) Michael Hoffman 1:58
  11. Worn Out Shoe Pixelee 1:19
  12. Emmylou (Naked) First Aid Kit (mock-up by Dimitris Plagiannis) 0:29
  13. Sleep Walk (Naked) Santo & Johnny (cover by Samuel Lidström) 2:22
  14. Dust (Naked) Henning Nugel 2:25
  15. Steely Jazz (Naked) Dimitris Plagiannis 1:00
  16. Half A Mind (Naked) Roger Miller (mock-up by Dimitris Plagiannis) 0:51
  17. Crying (Naked) Dimitris Plagiannis 0:57
  18. Ashokan Farewell (Naked) Jay Ungar (arrr. Dimitris Plagiannis) 1:22
  19. Blue Christmas (Naked) Billy Hayes & Jay W. Johnson (arr. Dimitris Plagiannis) 1:08

Product Info

Content

Nearly 10,000 24-bit recordings

Two amp channels and DI (direct) channel. Use any cabinet of your choice!

Meticulous sampling

Every fret and every string recorded with up to 9x RR per note.

All key articulations

Sustain, harmonic, legato, vibrato, pitch bends.

Multiple tunings available

Used the included temperament presets or create your own from scratch.

Pedal Steel Guitar Closeup

Features

Designed for real-time performance
Intuitive harmonizer engine
Automatic slide and vibrato playing
Beautiful, functional UI
Over 30 FX modules included

Requirements

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6GB disk space

7200 RPM hard drive or solid state drive recommended.

4GB of RAM

Higher amounts of memory let you load more instruments.

Apple M1, Intel i5 or equivalent CPU

A faster CPU with more cores will allow you to play more simultaneous voices.

Kontakt 5.7+ Player

This library will run in the FREE Kontakt Player.

Kontakt Requirements - Mac OSX

Intel Macs (i5 or higher): macOS 10.12 or higher
Apple Silicon Macs (via Rosetta 2 & natively on ARM in Standalone or in hosts that support it): macOS 11 or 12 (latest update)

Kontakt Requirements - Windows

Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (latest Service Pack, 32/64-bit). Intel Core i5 or equivalent CPU. Graphics hardware support for OpenGL 2.1 or higher. Windows 10 strongly recommended.

Tutorials

Library Trailer

Instrument Overview

Harmonization Tutorial

Details

This library is all about capturing and performing the unmistakable sound of the pedal steel guitar, a classic of American music for over 100 years. The instrument originated in the Hawaiian Islands as a regular guitar, de-fretted and played with the edge of a dull knife to produce a signature sliding tone. It then evolved into the Dobro, followed by the lap steel guitar, before arriving finally at the pedal steel we know today: complete with electrified output and pedal control.

As the name suggests, pedal steel guitars rely on not just the hands to fret and play melodies and chords, but also the feet and knees to trigger pedals and levers. By doing so, the performer can produce unlimited inversions and chords under expressive sliding melodies. Our goal with our Pedal Steel was to offer this level of flexibility, without requiring intimate knowledge of the techniques required to play the actual instrument!

Library Concept

In creating this library, we recorded a modern standard 10-string E9 pedal steel (Nashville tuning) through a DI box, later re-amped with Fender and MESA/Boogie tube amps. The amps were recorded at their speaker output using a reactive load box so that they can be used with any cabinet IR including our own Console FX rack and mixer.

Capturing all the nuance and flexibility of a pedal steel guitar was a huge challenge, but making it playable on a standard MIDI controller was an even greater hurdle. Our goal with this library was to offer easy playability without requiring intimate knowledge of a pedal steel guitar. To that end, it has a few key design concepts:

1. There is no visual fretboard, as we wanted the focus to be on simply playing the instrument.
2. Multiple modes of playing depending on whether you want monophonic leads, polyphonic chords, or lead + harmonies.
3. An innovative harmony system that uses simple keyswitching with a powerful editor to produce nearly unlimited voicings.

The project’s goal was to create an expressive instrument that doesn’t distract you with unnecessary complexities. We hope we came close, and that you will find this virtual instrument inspiring and enjoyable!

How to Play

Pedal Steel uses a unique layout allowing you to create harmonies underneath melodies without using multiple tracks. Of course, the instrument can be used in simple polyphonic mode (for chords w/ legato) or monophonic mode (for leads), but the real star is Harmonized Mono mode.

In this mode, the right hand plays the instrument’s melody range (blue keys), while the left hand controls harmony triggering (yellow keys) and tonic note (red keys).

By holding a harmony (yellow key) and playing a melody note, a harmony will automatically be triggered under the melody note. The specific harmony is based on the tonic note, harmony key(s) and melody key played. For example, Harmony 1 will simply trigger the tonic note underneath the melody you’re playing, while Harmony 4 will trigger major thirds built from the melody.

You can edit how these harmonies are created with our flexible Harmonization editor, but the possibilities are endless even with the default 11 harmony setups – and you can hold multiple keys at once to seamless switch between no harmony or huge sliding chords!


Console: Modular FX Rack and Mixer


Console is our new mixer and modular effects rack, designed to give you full control over your instrument tone and space. Unlike our previous FX racks, which were limited to a small amount of preset modules, Console gives you 30 effects modules to choose from!

These include multiple EQs (digital and analog-style), compressors, spatial FX, modulation FX, amps, distortion pedals, reverbs, and a selection of over 30 custom cabinet IRs! Using Console, you can easily save and load FX chains or presets between projects or even different Console-enabled ISW instruments. It also allows you to mix and blend between mic positions, with custom inserts on each if you’d like.

Download the Console manual here to learn more!

Reviews

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Pedal Steel – HIFIMIDI

“In my opinion, this is truly a wonderful instrument. The Pedal Steel has a very mystical and Eastern-quality because of its nasal timbre, and ability to produce microtones. It’s a complex instrument, and I think considering how difficult it would be to script it, with all it’s nuances and rules, Impact SoundWorks did an incredible job bringing it to life. This is a must-buy product.”

HIFIMIDI (06/2021)

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Pedal Steel – Sample Library Review

“I’m pretty pleased with Pedal Steel; I think it delivers exactly what I expected, which is a big plus any time you’re picking up any new virtual instrument. I especially love the way that this has been designed to be able to be played as an instrument…I love any instrument that allows me to get a realistic sound for specific styles just by opening it up, learning a couple keyswitches, and getting dug in to play what I need to play…”

Sample Library Review (07/2019)

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Pedal Steel – Sound on Sound

“The sampling itself is of a high quality… and the mixing and processing facilities are very good, so if you’re prepared to work on your playing technique and master the tools provided, this instrument is certainly worth a try.” (4/5 Stars)

Tom Flint (Sound on Sound)

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Pedal Steel – Synth & Software

“…Impact Soundworks takes exacting measures to engage the instrument’s characteristic quirks in ways that allow keyboardists to easily sidestep some of its hurdles…this sample library achieves the sound and performance of a bona fide pedal steel guitar with Nashville tuning. Furthermore, it does it far better than any synth emulation I’ve heard. Impact Soundworks Pedal Steel is the library to beat.”

Marty Cutler (Synth & Software)

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Pedal Steel – KeyboardKraze

“This company puts out a product that is state of the art almost every time. Pedal Steel is an extremely playable pedal steel guitar… As far as the sound quality goes with Pedal Steel, I really believe it’s top-notch. There’s really not much to dislike here, other than the price is a little steep.”

Chris Senner (KeyboardKraze)