What's the Metaphor?

May 2024 Update: When this blog post was originally written, the best way to think about the OnePSG's design seemed to be what's described below. However, a better metaphor came to mind later: Fly-by-Wire. Check the Fly by Wire page here.

For a long time, I've wondered what the best way is to describe how the OnePSG is similar to a traditonal PSG, and how it is different, in such a way that it doesn't turn off the most die hard PSG purist.

How can you still call this thing a pedal steel? No changers or pullrods? Aren't you changing it completely? Aren't you removing its soul? I like traditional pedal steel. The music, the instrument. Don't go changing it.

I've thought of and discarded dozens of ways of explaing it all. The analogy, metaphor, I've come up with most recently is that of an electric car. Here goes...

An electric car gets you from here to there like traditional car. Not just that. It feels like a traditional car. It's got windows and AC and comfortable seats. The "user interface" is the same. In other words you interact with it just the same. There's a steering wheel you turn to steer, and an accelerator and a brake pedal which you use to control the car, to make it do what it does. That's how they're the same. How are they different? It has a different mechanism under the hood that you don't notice because it doesn't change the purpose of a car or how you use it.

Similarly, the OnePSG has pedals and knee levers and metal strings and magnetic pickups. You play it just the same. The difference? It has a different mechanism, under the hood. It doesn't change the purpose of the instrument or how you use it.

We know that back in the day there were guitar players, masters, who did not consider the new-fangled electric guitar, a guitar. It's got the same six strings and you fret it and pick it. Of course it's a guitar.

PS: The next thing is what to call this pedal steel guitar, in order to distinguish it from a traditional PSG (the way we sometimes say "electric guitar" to specifically differentiate it from an acoustic guitar. It's not a "digital pedal steel" (which would imply some new-fangled instrument, played differently). So what should it be called? Suggestions welcomed.