Fiddle treated like pedal steel; Newbie question about effects/plug ins/ VST

[nbiehl]

Hi,

I'm an acoustic musician, and I do a lot more performing than recording/mixing, so I know very little about effects and plug ins. Most of my effects/processing experience has been trying to make instruments sound like what they are, but I'm interested in playing around with processing to get some new noises out of my tracks.

I was listening to some pedal steel today (not the hot western swing style, the atmospheric pad variety) and I'm interested in trying to make a fiddle pad sound similar. I know it's futile to try to make it sound exactly like a steel, and I don't even really want to. I just want to move it in that direction and see what happens.

Anyone got ideas? Tons of reverb and a little tremolo to start, but where should I go from there? Is there a reaper plug in that adds old tube characteristics? An expression pedal plug in?

I really know almost nothing about this, and I'm looking to have some fun, so if you can remember any processing tricks that really blew your mind when you first discovered them, I'd love to hear about it. I'm especially interested in learning about fun and surprising things that happen when you apply an effect in a way it wasn't designed to work. Anything goes.

Thanks a lot for your help.