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The analogy does not hold up. There are quite a lot of differences between a "pedal steel" guitar, and an electric guitar. First, electric guitars do not have pedals. Pedal steel guitars do not have a resonating wood body. They produce very different sounds in very different ways.

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Of course they do but the description described "techniques"; he's talking about a horizontal guitar play style.

As my comment said I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the patent itself (and really the claims are the thing) just saying that that part of the description is probably wrong. And that the patent system doesn't care.

FWIW all the pedal steel guitars I've ever seen are in fact electric guitars... but I know what you meant.

From the image, it looks like it’s intended to be used specifically for two-handed tapping, which was made famous by Van Halen and not commonly used (or at all) in pedal steel playing. Not sure if that would be unique enough to qualify for patent or not.

https://youtu.be/z_lwocmL9dQ

To my knowledge, steel guitars typically don't even have frets, so it would be essentially impossible.

I play both guitar and pedal steel. The tapping techniques that would be used on a horizontal 6-string guitar would be impractical on a steel guitar (lap or pedal) because the action is too high and there are no frets.

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