Like many steelers, I've gone through a lot of gear looking for the ultimate stage and recording sound. For me the main requirements are quality and purity of tone, and consistency of sound from venue to venue.
Currently I'm playing a ZumSteel SD-10 Pedal Steel Guitar through a Kickin' Steel Dobro simulator and Sarno Electronics Freeloader (Both mounted to the right rear steel leg.) From there the signal goes through a Seymour Duncan Twin Tube Overdrive, then a Hilton Electronics Infra-Red Volume Pedal.
In this stage view you can see the top of my "Sidekick" rack, which sits at the changer end of my steel. The rack contains a custom "Blackface" Walker Stereo Steel Amplifier with a TC Electronics M-One in the effects loop. For tuning onstage and in the studio I use the Peterson Strobo-Flip virtual strobe tuner. The rack has a filtered power strip for the gear, which also holds the transformer for the Hilton pedal. Just open it up, plug in a couple of things and I'm good to go. (I also use a Heet Sound E-bow, which is a hand-held electromagnetic string driver).
I sometimes gig with much less gear than you see here, but it's nice to have the different tones and effects available, if only for a part of a song.
The Hilton pedals are an enormous improvement over the older potentiometer style- no tone loss or change throughout the full range of the pedal. When I want to play lap steel, I just plug my Asher Electro-Hawaiian Jr. into the volume pedal and use the Duncan for overdrive or distortion. Although it sounds complicated, it takes me about 10 minutes to set up and be ready to play.
In the studio I sometimes use parts of this setup, but most frequently I use the Sarno Freeloader and Hilton Volume Pedal into a modified Peavey Trans-TubeFex preamp either directly into the board, or through various studio preamps or compressors, depending on the sound the particular track requires or the producer prefers.
