The Steel Guitar Forum

Take a look at Mark Deutsch's breakdown chart (Key of D).

http://www.bazantar.com/grid.html


Look at the notes around F and F# in the far right column. These number show where, in cents -/+ of the equal tempered (fretted) notes, the "real", naturally ocurring, harmonically resonant notes live. There is a handful of good notes in the minor to major third range, none of which are actually on the fret exactly. The ear of a good blues player will play with a number of these notes consciously or unconsciously. Albert King and Roy Buchannan come to mind. You know, that sound when you start to sqeeze a minor third and suddenly there are these more beautful and emotional sounding notes that live between the frets.

Brad

Don't think it's been mentioned, but playing in E on the steel (E9th tuning), there are some nice sounding blues licks using open strings and barred notes, sometimes together. No pedals required. Good workout for the left hand...Jerry

Jim S., we've been through this before. I don't know where you got the false idea that steelers don't know and use boxes. The only steelers I've ever met who didn't work out of boxes were self-taught beginners who were trying to do everything going up and down single strings. Anyone who actually plays the instrument has clear ideas about boxes. They are sometimes called positions. There is the open pedal I chord position. On E9, press the A and B pedals and you have a IV chord; move up two frets and you have V chord. Go back to the I fret and press the A pedal and you have the relative minor chord (IVm). Activate the F lever and you have the VI major. Press the B and C pedals and you have the IIm chord. Using the "chromatic" strings you can alter the chords with 7ths, 6ths, 9ths, etc. That is one box covering 3 frets. If you go up to the V chord fret and press the A and B pedals you have another I chord. Drop back two frets and release the pedals and you have a IV. Move up two frets and you have the V. There are other chords in that 3 fret box. There are many such boxes that steelers use. I have never met even an intermediate steeler who didn't know and use boxes. Emmons and other teachers have written about boxes. It is an absolutely essential part of playing the instrument. Furthmore, the vast majority of steelers played regular guitar, just like you, for many years before taking up steel. They knew as much about boxes on guitar as you. Do you really think they wouldn't apply the same reasoning to steel? So I don't know where you get this idea that only you and guitar players know about boxes, and poor ignorant steelers don't. I don't think I'm being overly sensitive to suggest that idea is insulting.

As for blues boxes on steel. They are basically the same boxes we already know, but some different notes within the box are used. There may be some unique blues boxes. One could consider the box 3 frets up from the tonic as a blues box - call it the tritone box. There is also a box 3 frets up from the IV, and one 3 frets up from the V.

I also don't agree with the simplistic idea that you either play using scales and modes, or you play from feeling. If you can play a blues run, chances are it follows the pentatonic scale. Some blues runs follow the pure scale, some don't. You can learn the pentatonic scale run without knowing it is the pentatonic scale. That's probably the way most of us learned it. But it certainly doesn't hurt to study the pentatonic scale and recognize you have been playing it. The same with various modes. And the same with chords. When you learn the sound of a scale run, mode or chord, whether by copying somebody else's licks, or by discovering it by accident and experimentation, or by seeing it in written music and playing it to see what it sounds like, regardless of how you got there, you now have a sound in your head that you can play when you feel it. They are all valid ways of discovering and owning that sound. And of course you are not bound to stick to it in every detail, but can vary it as you feel like it.

I don't study theory as much as I would like, but when I do, I usually have some eureka moments when I play something off the written page, and immediately recognize it as something I once heard but didn't know how to play. That's just as valid as learning from watching somebody play a lick, or copying a lick off a recording. As I have said before, if I had to choose, I would rather learn to play by ear than by theory and written music. I guess that's why I gave up classical piano and took up sax, guitar and steel. But fortunately we don't have to make that choice, but can learn all ways.

I understand what you are saying - that a good improviser of blues (or any other improvised genre) plays from feeling, not from abstract theory. But I don't think it is that simple. Yes, we don't think of each individual note and their individual roles in scales, modes and theory. But we do think in phrases and licks. And even if we uniquely vary them, the basic structures come from our memory of phrases and licks, some of which are scales, modes, and chord arpeggios. Some we may have learned as licks, and some as scales. Once you own it and can recall it and play it and work variations on it, it doesn't matter whether you learned it as a lick or as a scale off paper. They are all just different and valid ways of learning the same stuff, music.

David, you steelers seem to think of your boxes in a different manner than guitarists. Your boxes seem more chord oriented and you often use musical terminology to describe and define them, whereas guitarists boxes seem more lead(single note) oriented and we tend to think in terms of shapes rather than I, IV, 7ths or whatever.

If Im wrong about that and your steel boxes are similar to my guitar boxes, than that has not been presented in any of the learning material or instruction Ive seen and it should be. Lesson 1.

Now when i find that box am I gonna let it shackle me? am I gonna play only notes from the blues scale and not your beloved microtones? common.....Its a rough sketch, a launching pad. Im a musician seeking to express myself not a robot reading a punch card

I took one dobro lesson from a great player and teacher and fellow forumnite Orville Johnson (thank you sir!). He showed me the box he uses...GOLD. Im off and running with that. I dont sound like him, he's him, Im me...same box. for whatever reason on PSG that aint presented well IMHO if it does indeed exist

Brad said

There is a handful of good notes in the minor to major third range, none of which are actually on the fret exactly.

I'd put it further and claim that there is a universe of notes between a minor and major third. And that's not even considering alternate dimensions!

Interesting, Brad. I never even thought to try to analyze microtones in terms of harmonically-related intervals. I sort of wonder if that fits with the way good blues players actually play. I would think one would notice the harmonicity for the rational numbers with smaller denominators. If so, the b7 interval has a bunch - that's another one of the important ambiguous blue note areas.

I think a lot of blues players tend to use dissonance from not being on rationally-related frequencies in a passing way, to create tension to resolve to something rationally related. I know I do, at least. I have never, ever thought about trying to mathematically understand what I'm doing, and I do math for a living. For me, it's purely an ear thing. I can just imagine telling this to some of my more blues-police friends.

One box on the steel that is very similar to the most commonly used blues box on the guitar is, key of G, 1st fret with the root, G, being on the 7th string. With the 6th string raised with the "B" pedal, and bending the 5th string up a tone (or increments of), as desired, with the "A" pedal. The 4th string and 2nd string are thrown in as needed.
So it's the two frets down position, with the root on the 7th string.That's pretty much the basic pentatonic blues box right there. An idea I picked up from the forum years ago. Thanks to bOb and Dan Tyack for that one...Jerry

Ben, if you think about it, pedal steel "boxes" are not "shapes" oriented because so many of the notes are obtained by altering pitches mechanically under the guitar.

On either instrument, if you're going to play over a given chord, you kind of have to know at least where the root notes are to pattern your licks in relation to. Blues players who lack even that information are very limited in their ability to play interestingly or expressively.

There's a cut on Jimmie Vaughan's first solo album where he's soloing, let's say hypothetically (I don't remember what key the song is actually in), in E, and the chord progression goes to a two-bar C# major, and poor Jimmie keeps wanking away at his E blues box, where blues licks don't work well with C# major. It's grating and painful to listen to. I'm not being the Theory Police here; what he's playing just doesn't work, sounds ugly, and it's obviously because of his relative ignorance.

EDITED TO ADD: I said "blues players who lack..", NOT "blues players, who lack..." (The comma is an important difference). I am NOT generalizing that blues players lack this knowledge. Very few recorded ones do lack it. I'm amazed that they even included the J.V. cut I'm speaking of on the album. I'd have thought he himself, or somebody, would have insisted on doing however many more takes would get something that worked!

Ben, we use the boxes the same way guitar players do. While there are chords in the box, and that is the way I described the boxes above, of course you can play single note leads in the box. For many notes you have the option of finding a note a whole or half-step away either by catching a "chromatic string", pressing or releasing a pedal or lever, or moving the bar one or two frets. For blues, I am more likely to move the bar. That way I can slide into and out of and between notes, and get all those microtones Dan and Brad are talking about.

I don't see this as any different than the guitar boxes. Maybe the emphasis is a little different. On guitar, the box is used for single string lead work, but there are also chords within the box. On steel, the boxes are mostly identified with chord positions, but there is single string lead work within the box also. Except for speed picking, steelers like to add harmony to their lead work. The whole point of the extra strings and the pedals and levers is to allow one to add harmony to a lead line, even though the bar is straight and cannot be configured the way a guitarist's left hand fingers can. So I guess for steelers there is much more to a box than just the individual single string notes. There is also the harmony you can get with the extra strings, pedals and levers. But the single string notes are always still there. The extra strings, pedals and levers do not provide a full chromatic scale. So you still have to move the bar to get some notes, and if you want to use slides and microtones.

I'm not familiar with all the instruction material out there. Some of it may focus on learning chords, scales and song melodies without specifically pointing out the boxes. But you are always playing within a box, or transitioning between boxes. I've never given formal lessons to beginners. But sometimes I swap licks with them to show them stuff. I always start with the boxes, just in case they haven't caught on to them yet. Some beginners already know about the boxes, even if they are self-taught. But for some it is a revelation. I'm always surprised by that. Learning about the open pedal box and the AB pedals-down box would be lesson #1 in any plan I drew up. I know Jeff Newman's stuff describes boxes, but he doesn't necessarily call them that. And I remember a series of articles by Buddy Emmons in a steel guitar magazine decades ago. His stuff was nothing but boxes, and he called them boxes, and he had dots and lines showing lick patterns within the boxes, exactly like in guitar magazines.

Jim Sliff wrote: Most guitar players in blues and blues-based rock (except the more advanced blues players that b0b alluded to)....read this carefully...don't think or play in terms of scales or modes.

Guitar players - most of them, having been one and been both a teacher AND student for decades - play out of positions. Jazz and classical players are the notable exceptions (along with some of the melodic-metal guys).

I'm generalizing, to be sure - but most guitar players use as "home base" one of two basic positions - the "blues box" and the "country (or "major") box".

I think that most steel players do the same thing. I know that I do. We just don't call our fret positions "boxes". Maybe we should.

Then you learn how to slide up a few notes, add bends, and find other positions - all of them actually based around chords you can grab quickly, for playing rhythm or arpeggios.

Yes, that's exactly how I approach pedal steel.

You HAVE to learn (if you've grown up learning scales) how to NOT think in terms of scales, and instead see geometric patterns - then it becomes a matter of "feel", and you start to get the picture.

The difference is that the geometric patterns on pedal steel are in your head. We don't always see it as simply a two-dimensional picture of notes on different frets. We include a mental picture of pedal changes superimposed on the current fret. It's an added invisible dimension of the fretboard, but the same so-called "box" concept still applies.

On the flip side, when playing steel I have no clue how to find or play scales - I'm looking for patterns. I'm just starting to find several ones that I use the same way, but the blues ones are still elusive.

Actually, they are as plain as the nose on you face. You can't see your nose, but you know it's there.

Ben, if you think about it, pedal steel "boxes" are not "shapes" oriented because so many of the notes are obtained by altering pitches mechanically under the guitar.

-Brint, you are correct and I had not thought of it that way. That really is the problem for a guitarist like myself coming to pedal steel..this damn fretboard keeps shifting on us!

David- thanks for your thoughtful reply. I guess my gripe with the instructional material is that while some (few) mention the boxes like "no pedals" "AB down" etc, none of em show me where the blues box is . I find that odd because alot of country riffage uses blues licks and because its fairly simple straightforward and extremely useful stuff that younger non-country players would love as well. Now that i'm starting to see where the "blues boxes" are they have very little to do with open position or AB down boxes.

what I'd really like to hear is the bar movement blues stuff mixed with the beautiful pedal movements more associated with country psg. Robert Randolph-esque but with lotsa pedal movement? That would be sick. I'm still fairly ignorant of the instrument and the players tho so maybe someone has or is hoeing that row?

funny thing is I dont even want to play the blues, but that blues box is the root of all the other stuff i DO wanna play.

And I remember a series of articles by Buddy Emmons in a steel guitar magazine decades ago. His stuff was nothing but boxes, and he called them boxes, and he had dots and lines showing lick patterns within the boxes, exactly like in guitar magazines.

...that sounds like what I coulda used (and still could use)

I have a great idea for anyone who is serious about learning to play the blues on the pedal steel. Check out my course "Mississippi Blues for E-9th". In this course I give examples of all the scales that everyone has been talking about, all the chords that they fit over, all the common progressions for the blues, and tips and tricks on how to make your guitar sound like you are playing the blues. Please remember there is no substitute for soul, and that's what really makes the blues sound like the blues. You can purchase my course at steellabs.com. If you're already a great blues player, then flat a 5 for me.

James

David and b0b - I said I was being fairly simplistic in my description, and you both proceeded to show me I was being too simplistic.

Duh.

I guess my gripe with the instructional material is that while some (few) mention the boxes like "no pedals" "AB down" etc, none of em show me where the blues box is .

Ben's right. David, the Emmon's "box stuff is the only material like that I have ever seen for steel, and I must have a thousand pages of stuff people have sent me. And you still don't get it - the thinking is TOTALLY different. You're still thinking in terms odf scales, but you fit them in a box - guitar players (you must be the exception based on Ben's and my experience, I guess) don't think that way - we see, hear, feel, play patterns - often not knowing what chord or note we're playing at any given moment, ans certainly not ahaving any idea...nor caring...what scale.

I know the patterns you're talking about, but those, as Ben stated, are shord-based, not a "framework" of single notes. It's a different mindset. And most steelers DO NOT GET IT. That's why many guitarists wonder where the useful material is in steel instruction books. And taking *your* "major" patterns up 3 frets doesn't give ME a blues-box, so I don't know where you're getting that info.

I think some players just need to accept that guitarists look at things differently, and if you don't want to help us find things our way, fine - but don't tell us we're wrong, or that the stuff is actually there (and then proceed to describe how completely diferent it is), or that all the scale talk is the same thing - because it's not.

Dave Mudgett explains some of the differences in musical terms, and also talks about the "feel" portion, which often gets lost in the shuffle of modal discussions.

But guys, if you take a guitar, play those patterns I described...then transfer them to steel,...you'll find they are most certainly not as plain as the nose on one's face. This discussion has come up several times and no one has yet laid out comparable geometric patterns to the ones guitarists use every day. "A&B pedal mashing" is a chordal move - not a single-note pattern.

Like I said - some folks don't get it. They insist they do, but still can't translate it into terms guitar players grasp...which to me indicates they don't understand the concept. If they did, they could translate it into an easily-duplicated note-for-note form.

Brint - the pitch changing isn't really critical, as the patterns DO have bends in them that are really almost the same thing. Still no one lays them out.

As for blues boxes on steel. They are basically the same boxes we already know, but some different notes within the box are used. There may be some unique blues boxes. One could consider the box 3 frets up from the tonic as a blues box - call it the tritone box. There is also a box 3 frets up from the IV, and one 3 frets up from the V.

"There may be some unique blues boxes?" There you go. You really do not know what we mean. Your statement about "steelers all use boxes" is true - but they DO NOT RELATE to the same boxes guitar players use - which is what we're talking about. They are chord boxes, and while yes, we've been through it before, the difference is still apparently not understood.

David, I'll add about the Emmons "boxes" - they move far beyond what we're talking about. They are extremely complicated, and are strung out over numerous frets. Let's try talking about the two primary "guitar-based" positions I mentioned and go from THERE. The simple stuff first.

How about taking the pedals out of the equation - shouldn't one be able to duplicate major and blues frameworks without the pedals, even?

This is something I've seen guitar players who play steel (especially starting out) ask for offten, and the responses are usually the same - "it's right there" either without further explanation, or with a treatise on the applicable scales.

It doesn't seem to change much.

The guitar sets itself up for pentatonic scales for a very simple reason: alternate your index and ring finger( one or two frets between) anywhere on the neck, and you have your basic "blues" pattern. It is a naturally occuring pattern. Some people just cannot play the blues, no matter how hard they try. I know personally some really great guitarists that do not get it, and probably never will. I also know some excellent blues players that can not play much else. Vocals are the same, there are many fabulous singers that cannot sing the blues, and vice versa. No doubt this applies to steel guitar also. It's not just the notes, phrasing is a major part of this discussion. JP

Speaking of blues on steel, albeit lap steel, take a listen to this Skip James number by Cindy Cashdollar and Sonny Landreth on YouTube that Andy Volk just posted on another thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUHyNky8Q9s[/quote]

Meantime I'm gonna take Jim's guitar box examples and try to figure out how to write out the equivalent for a blues box on E9 or C6.

In the key of D, 5th fret, A&B down, (10 string E9th), all the strings except 2&9 are major pentatonic scale. And moved up 3 frets, the same strings are all minor pentattonic scale.
The fact that you can play nothing but major triads up three frets from the major position and know that your going to be in minor pent/dorian/minor seventh, whatever...i think Does qualify as a box. A different kind of box than on guitar. But steel's cooler and so are our boxes.

My site

David - please know that doing that would be sincerely appreciated. I don't play E9 or C6 (I ply an 8-string B6 and an odd 10-string permutation of the same thing) but other players will appreciate it, and I'm sure I'll be able to port some of it over to my oddball tuning. It'll be really interesting to see how it lays out - I've tried to do it and just can't get there from here....

A different kind of box than on guitar. But steel's cooler and so are our boxes.

Excpet for the guitar player learning steel, it's not helpful to find a different box - I can play the same "box" on mandolin - different shape, same notes. And no one instrument is "cooler" than another. The "cool" thing would be to find the commonality - not "ours is different but cooler, deal with it".

Gee srry, didnt mean to push your buttons and make you jump.

My site

Jim Sliff wrote:And taking *your* "major" patterns up 3 frets doesn't give ME a blues-box, so I don't know where you're getting that info.

Jim, if your B6th is tuned like Sneaky Pete's 8-string, you should be able to get the notes you want by sliding up three frets. For example, in the key of B, the open strings, with the scale numbers are:

D# (3)
B (1)
G# (6)
F# (5)
D# (3)
B (1)
G# (6)
F# (5)

If you slide up three frets, the notes line up like this:

F# (5)
D (b3)
B (1)
A (b7)
F# (5)
D (b3)
B (1)
A (b7)

Since a large part of the blues sound (at least the blues that I like to play on guitar) is found in the b3 and b7 tones of the scale, it would seem like you could get those sounds with no pedals at this position. I say it would "seem" you could because I've never tried this version of B6th, so I am looking at it from paper. How are your pedals set up? I'd be interested to see how the pedals factor into this tuning.

Okay, here are some very basic boxes. These are on E9. They work the same on a 6th tuning, but the box will just be at a different starting fret, and you will have to find the appropriate string (guided by where the roots are) and skip the string that gives the 6th. I'll follow your convention and give the fret followed by the string.

Open E at the nut (will be open B at the nut on B6):
3rd fret, 3rd string; 1st fr., 3rd str.; 3rd fr., 4th str.; 0 fr., 4th str. (the root); 3rd fr., 5th str.; 0 fr., 5th str.; 1st fr., 6th str.; slur 2nd fr. to 3rd fr., 8th str. (major pentatonic) or slur 3rd fr. to 4th fr., 8th str. (minor pentatonic); 0 fr., 8th str. (root). So you can see that mostly you are going back and forth from the 3rd fret to the nut.

If you put press the A and B pedals down, you will be in the key of A at the nut. You can do the same thing as above, but everything is moved up one string. Leave out the top string above, and the 8th string will have to move up two strings instead of one. My LKV raises strings 1 and 7 a half step, which gives the 7b in this AB pedal box.

Key of E at the 12th fret:
12th fr., 3rd str.; 12th fr., 4th str. (root); 10th fr., 4th str.; 12th fr., 5th str.; 10th fr., 5th str.; slur 11th fr. to 12th fr., 6th str. (major) or slur 10th fr. to 11th fr., 6th str. (minor); 12th fr. 8th str. (root). So you are mostly going back and forth from a root fret to two frets lower.

But being a pedal steel, you can also get some of the above notes with a pedal or lever without changing frets: instead of 10th fr., 4th str., use 12th fr., 2nd string with the lever that lowers it a half step (7b). And instead of 10th str., 5th fr., stay at the 12th fr. and hit the B pedal.

A pedal minor box, key of A minor:
8th fr., 4th str.; 8th fr., 5th str. (root); 6th fr., 5th str.; 8th fr., 6th str.; 6th fr., 6th str.; 8th fr., 8th str.; 8th fr., 10th str. (root). So you are going back and forth between the root fret and two frets lower. This is a powerful box. It is nice because the bottom string of 10-string E9 is the root. On a uni, there is a full octave of the open minor chord below that, and the bottom string is still the root. My LKV raises strings 1 and 7 a half step, which gives the 5b. If you release the A pedal and go up two frets (10th fret) you have the IV chord. If you press the A and B pedals and drop down one fret from the root fret you have the V. And with my vertical lever, it is a V7.

This would all appear much simpler if it was tabbed out. But I don't have time to do that right now.

Yes, Kyle has shown the box located a tritone above any root fret for any major chord tuning. I really don't consider that a different box, but rather consider it a part of the root fret box. In the root fret box you can get a lot of blues stuff by dropping down two frets or going up three frets.

By the way, the tuning boxes above are really the same as the boxes used by slide guitar players on regular guitar tuned to an open major chord. These boxes go back to Robert Johnson, Son House and Elmore James. The minor tuning box goes back to Skip James and Bukka White. There's nothing new here. We just have a few more strings than they did.

Thanks fo rtaking the time to work that out for us. Key of E is confusing because of the open strings (yes, Im a big baby I know).

How bout key of A instead. E9th tuning again for simplicity and cause thats all I got
To get this bone simple so us bone headed guitarists can wrap our noggins around it..lets just start with no pedals. I find a box very similar to a guitar style single note box between frets 5 and 3 using no pedals and a bar slide or two that sounds very bluesy to me. Ive seen people draw tabs in posts...lemme try:
..........3......4......5
4.........X.............X
5.........X.............X
6.........~~~X.......
7........................
8.......................X

so a simple box between strings 8 and 4 (string 10 works well too but lets start at root on string 8
no pedals, the squiggle on string 6 represent a slide from fret 3 to 4.

feel free to rip that apart and tell me its wrong, Im not sensitive about it, nor do i know my theory as ive said...go nuts on it, but its the kind of simple pattern I was lookin for in the instructional material.

Thanks David and Kyle - that's helpful. It's still hard to fully comprehend - again, us poor guitar players are used to seeing all this in graphic form - not tab, but in a fretboard layout. When I look at the fretboard (and I think Ben would agree) we don't see it in a linear manner as the descriptions are laid out - we see a "picture" of the entire pattern overlaid, as Ben tried to demonstrate.

That's where a lot of the confusion sets in - steelers invariably describe the essential b3 and *what* notes are contained in the scale...and honestly, most guitar players don't care, we just need the layout, not the reasoning (I know, it's a dumb way of thinking, but very few guitar players I know are well-versed in theory and virtually none...rock, country, style doesn't matter...practice scales, ever - except jazz guitarists).

With the descriptions given we can sort of slowly crawl through it - but this whol eidea goes back to some previous discussions about buudget steels, beginners instruction packages that are not style-specific, etc. You can have someone playing basic steel in hours with a few logical patterns the then telling them when to push the pedals - without all the "why". Just practical, shortcut methodology. THEN they can go back and learn all the scale and theory stuff if they choose, but in the meantime they can play simple 3 and 4 chord stuff, because they can "see" it on the fretboard.

This is the basis of reams of guitar teaching materials, and NO steel materials. And this is where the steel industry would grab a lot more guitar players if they would just understand how guitarists think. John Fabian has a video that relates steel to guitar - but even though he has the right intentions, he approaches it from a steeler's thought-process, and when talking about " you have all the same stuff as you do on guitar" he talks about it in steel-world terms, so it (IMO) misses the mark completely.

Yes, if you take the box I described above for the key of E at the 12th fret, and subtract 7 from every fret, you get what Ben has shown for the key of A with the 5th fret as the root fret.

For the key of E with no open strings, press the A and B pedals at the 7th fret. Strings 3 down to 6 give an open tuned major E chord. Going back and forth between the 7th and 5th frets gives a box similar to the one Ben has shown, but you don't have to skip the 7th string. When the progression changes to IV (A), you have two options. You can continue to play the pentatonic scale notes in the box at the 7th fret with the pedals down (you can always play the root pentatonic scale over any chord in blues). Or you can release the pedals and drop down to the 5th fret for an A chord. You can try Ben's box for the A pentatonic scale over that A chord. But in some cases that might not work as well as staying in the E pentatonic scale box and playing over the A chord.

Now to get Kyle's box, from Ben's no-pedals A box at the 5th fret, go up to the 8th fret and strings 5 down to 8 are A pentatonic scale notes.

If you are in the AB pedals-down position for the key of E at the 7th fret, get Kyle's tritone box by going up to the 10th fret. Strings 4 down to 7 are E pentatonic notes, and releasing the A pedal on string 5 gives a slur. The 1st and 7th strings are E roots in this postition.

There are plenty of other boxes. Essentially, every pedal and lever combination has the potential to be another box. The A pedal/F lever combination gives a good major pentatonic scale box, and has the advantage that the bottom string (10) is the root. Just as in the 5th fret box above, you can go back and forth between the root fret and two frets below and three frets above for pentatonic notes. And the "chromatic" strings give some useful notes too. In the A pedal/F lever postion, if you release the A pedal you get a diminished.

So you can treat the pedal steel like a lap steel and use boxes that require moving the bar back and forth between frets, with no pedal or lever action. That's what Robert Randolph does a lot of. But, unlike guitar and lap steel, a pedal steel can get some pentatonic notes by using auxiliary strings, pedals and levers within the box.