The Carter Starter is a surprisingly decent quality steel at that price point. It would make a nice instrument to decide if you wanted to take it further. You would definitely want to move up if you stuck with it.
There was a handful (2 or 3) other "beginner" steels back in the '70's, Shobud made one, so did MSA etc., but they were total pieces of dook. Inexpensive instruments of that ilk suffered really bad from body drop, basically bowing the body downward when the floor pedals were pushed down. Impossible to play with any degree of intonation. The bodies were generally made out of particle board. The little Carter is heads above these older student models..
There several things to consider when playing pedal steel.
1. The strings don't all tune to 440. Some go 438.5, 441 etc. You need a decent tuner, preferably with a needle, not lights.
2. The pedals all have to be tuned as well as the strings. Again these tunings will be odd.
3. Both hands, both feet and both knees all working together. No small feat. I always liked to say it's, "it's like wrasslin' a mechanical octopus.".
4. A sense of intonation is paramount!!!!! My old saying is, "No steel (or fiddle) player is better than a bad steel (fiddle) player.
At the top of my game I was a session player in Nashville for 8 years and played on many projects for people I'm sure you may have heard of.
I say go for it dood! If you ever develop a mastery of it, you will walk tall among mere mortals, wimmen will fall at your feet and babies will stop crying when you play!!! And...you will have all of the work you can handle!!!!
