Any musicians on here?

[cee-dee]

If you watch the following video, you'll see a chap playing something that looks like a "horizontal guitar"?

First of all, what's it's proper name and secondly, what's he doing when he's twiddling with something on his right hand side (our left as we view it)?

If you wanna skip 15 seconds of intro chat, click the URL link at the bottom.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyYCClHDrmU&t=0m15s

[saasher2012]

Is it a zither& would it be a plectrum ?

[cee-dee]

I'm no musician but usually a Zither has a lotta strings?

I see there are some with only a few but that player is putting his hand over the strings against the frets.

Zithers don't have frets?

I hope a musician will post and tell us whether that instrument is an early electronic development of either a Guitar or Zither from a time when experimentation was going on.

[xtf70]

It's a horizontal steel guitar, much loved by Country & Western musicical ensembles

Here's a link to more details:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_guitar

[cee-dee]

Ahhhhhh, I see, thank you very much.

[charliebird123]

CD Steve Howe uses one quite a lot.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=steve+howe+playing+steel+guitar&client=firefox-a&hs=Pjh&rls=org.mo...