Zane Beck

Early history

Beck was born in northwest Arkansas, near Clarksville, in 1927. He became proficient in playing the steel guitar and became a staff musician on the Louisiana Hayride, a country music show broadcast from Shreveport. He was a frequent musical guest on Nashville's Grand Ole Opry. Beck left Sho–Bud to form his own company, ZB Music Company. thereafter, the pedal instrument became known as pedal steel to differentiate it from lap steel. The pedal instrument is a console steel played while seated. The foot pedals independently raise the pitch of certain strings on the instrument by a mechanical linkage to increase string tension. Beck extended the pedal concept by recruiting the player's knees to control a separate mechanism to lower the pitch of certain strings in addition those controlled by pedals. The levers are located unobtrusively underneath the body of the guitar, protruding downward on each side of each of the player's knees (see photo). The invention essentially doubled the performer's available options for chords by using his knees to participate in controlling the instrument in addition to both hands and both feet. The knee levers work independently of the foot pedals. Each knee can move medially or laterally to move the four levers; (Later models added additional levers actuated by raising the knee upward under the guitar as well as side-to-side.) The device was the "Harmolin" invented by Arthur R. Harmon and patented in 1933 but it was not successful and the patent expired in 1950. Beck's Steel Guitar Hall of Fame plaque reads, "He pioneered the use of knee levers, and was the first to install them on production guitars". Fender, Paul Bigsby, Sho-Bud as well as Zane Beck. Beck's first commercial installation of knee levers was in 1952 on the guitar of Kansas City guitarist Ray Noren. Each lever lowered one of four individual strings on Day's guitar by a semitone.