Alan got together with Ross Shafer, designer and builder of the amazingly innovative Sierra pedal steel guitars. Together they assembled the first of the two Beta Prototypes, using the maple body. Refer to all the photos below. The basic order of the build went like this:

• pedal sensor assemblies installed

• endplate hole cut outs

• endplate connectors (switch, power, guitar jack, USB port) installed and soldered

• test layout of main PCB, touchscreen, lever modules

• PCB installed

• pickup PCB installed

• lever modules placed and installed

• tone block temporarily installed

• update with last firmware

Finally, Alan gave a super quick demo to Ross of the capabilities of the steel.
Check out a couple of very short videos of the state of the Beta.

The rationale for two Betas: Eventually, it will be useful to have one instrument for continued testing while a second can make the rounds among several pedal steel players for real world testing and "user feedback."

Also, the cabinets of the two instruments are built of different materials. One is curly maple because … of course it is.

The second? As described in other parts of this website, the pitches coming from the amp or headphones are not the same as the low volume sounds one might hear acoustically from the strings or body.

Even though at a low amp output, the acoustic sounds are not heard, we want to lose as little of the physical strings' energy through the body as possible, since that is vibrational energy not making it into the pickup. We're using a different material on the second instrument to test if we can reduce that loss. The idea is to have as low an acoustic volume as possible. The whole exercise is a kind of A/B test of cabinet material.