Do You Lap Steel?

[ping-ping-clicka]

I have a pair of chandler lap steel guitars
When Chandler introduced them they were very affordable and the quality was excellent.
A single slab of Mahogany with a string through body arrangement and decent tuners.
I changed the basic models Charley Christian pickup for a DiMazio Humbucker from Hell. No it isn't like that, Somebody in marketing had to much caffeine on morning and thought the name would garner an increase in sale or something.
It's P-90 size humbucking, and has a smooth sharp edge like a well sharpened and honed knife with out the piercing highs. the Charley Christian is a very sweet pickup and sounds like an electrical storm with anything approaching high gain , hence the change. Both instrument have excellent sustain as is and with an added Keeley 4 nob compressor there is magic on tap.
I've seen a lot of over priced junk with big names and high budget presumptions. all the lovely detail of fine appointments won't improve the sound, not a bit. Sure they are impressive the finely detailed appointments if you want a show piece to impress ones peers but....I'm using Faux Amps and pedal to enhance the Neighbor Friendly aspects and still be able to coax a snarling Bobcat out of the little darling.

I've always been a fan of Larry D's pickups, Neighbor Friendly, and slide guitar
Here's a Shout out to those wonderful player that use all those tuning and all those string that grace country and swing bands .

 

[Deeve]

Recognizing & respecting Hank Sr, because, Hank Sr.
That said, Linda and Emmylou had fine sidemen as well, and they were a bit of eye candy as well as remarkable artists, so there.

 

[Peegoo]

Yes I do.

I'm not very good at it, but it's not for lack of adequate gear.

Lap steels are a great way to get into a birth year instrument for comparatively much smaller scratch than a guitar. These are from several years before I hatched, however.

Thank you Mr. Dave Lindley for getting me into this stuff.

 

[Texicaster]

I've been on the hunt for one for some time now....

There was a super cool 195x one on a local CL for months and I kept contacting the guy and never heard back! Must have entered a wrong email and phone number as I was begging "with cash!!!" and never a reply... It looked MINT too and ~$600 if memory serves.... I saw a "relic'd" one that looked terrible at a local guitar store for $900 so figured $600 was a good deal.

Oh well...it's fun to hunt for gear!

 

[57joonya]

I’ve got an old late 30’s Gibson lap steel that has amazing tone. I haven’t played it in a few years . Time to dust it off

 

[bottlenecker]

I have lapped steel, but enough shop talk. I play six string lap steel mostly in C6. The fender champion is my favorite. The gibson skylark is great though, and might move to G6. The Valco/Airline is on loan from my bass player.
I'm working on acoustic hawaiian guitar on the HG-00. I'm still trying to decide what tuning to keep it in. Right now it's in D major. I want to sound more hawaiian than dobro, but still be able to play fiddle songs.

 

[ping-ping-clicka]

Yes I do.

I'm not very good at it, but it's not for lack of adequate gear.

Lap steels are a great way to get into a birth year instrument for comparatively much smaller scratch than a guitar. These are from several years before I hatched, however.

Thank you Mr. Dave Lindley for getting me into this stuff.

now that there, is a pair to hold on to, real sweet, they are.
Brother Daves' playing is to die for .
He comes to mind on a Jackson Brown Tune ?
"Running on Empty" yes that's the one.

 

[ping-ping-clicka]

I have lapped steel, but enough shop talk. I play six string lap steel mostly in C6. The fender champion is my favorite. The gibson skylark is great though, and might move to G6. The Valco/Airline is on loan from my bass player.
I'm working on acoustic hawaiian guitar on the HG-00. I'm still trying to decide what tuning to keep it in. Right now it's in D major. I want to sound more hawaiian than dobro, but still be able to play fiddle songs.

View attachment 919715

View attachment 919716

I'm not jealous those are beauties

 

[Maguchi]

I have a pair of chandler lap steel guitars
When Chandler introduced them they were very affordable and the quality was excellent.
A single slab of Mahogany with a string through body arrangement and decent tuners.
I changed the basic models Charley Christian pickup for a DiMazio Humbucker from Hell. No it isn't like that, Somebody in marketing had to much caffeine on morning and thought the name would garner an increase in sale or something.
It's P-90 size humbucking, and has a smooth sharp edge like a well sharpened and honed knife with out the piercing highs. the Charley Christian is a very sweet pickup and sounds like an electrical storm with anything approaching high gain , hence the change. Both instrument have excellent sustain as is and with an added Keeley 4 nob compressor there is magic on tap.
I've seen a lot of over priced junk with big names and high budget presumptions. all the lovely detail of fine appointments won't improve the sound, not a bit. Sure they are impressive the finely detailed appointments if you want a show piece to impress ones peers but....I'm using Faux Amps and pedal to enhance the Neighbor Friendly aspects and still be able to coax a snarling Bobcat out of the little darling.

I've always been a fan of Larry D's pickups, Neighbor Friendly, and slide guitar
Here's a Shout out to those wonderful player that use all those tuning and all those string that grace country and swing bands .

Yup! Use a Peavey Powerslide. It can be played sitting down, but also standing up like a dobro with the top of the guitar facing the sky. Or like a regular slide guitar with the top of the guitar facing the front of the audience.

What I really want though is one those early '90s reissues of the Stringmaster Double Neck Steel Guitar (double neck, 8 string, non pedal) lap steels.

 

[teleman1]

i have a resonator lap steel by National>>>>>

best lap steel sound. might be selling in the future

 

[Mr. St. Paul]

I have a 1951 Magnatone Amerloha. Started out using G9 tuning, because that's what the first person I knew who played lap steel used. I'm more partial to C6 these days.

 

[mexicanyella]

I have a mystery lap steel that says either “Roybert” or “Roy Bert” on the headstock. I think it might be from the 40s and looks to me like it’s in the Kay/Valco Chicago kind of hemisphere.

I’m not much of a steel player, but I love using it to add simple textural parts, or cyclic loopy parts, to home recording projects. Maybe I’ll be noticeably better at it...someday.

I tune it to B11 these days after a long time of playing it in Dobro G. Here’s a snippet of a song project where I used it:

https://www.bandlab.com/revisions/1...0050f280467f?sharedKey=0UJF2_Cb4Uet69OOKYXwpw

 

[T-Bone]

I got bitten badly by the lap steel bug. I’m not a huge fan of country music or Hawaiian music, but lap steels make great blues machines too. And blues is what I dooz.

Some of my treasures. Clinesmith Frying Pan. Fouke Industrial. Rickenbacher B7, Gibson EH100-7. All seven string lap steels.
All tuned to D/Dm (f D A D F# A D)

I also put together this web page of lap steel tunings,
https://papadafoe.com/lap-steel-tuning-database

 

[bluesintheblood]

Man I regret selling my Chandler...but I weissenborn and have an el cheapo recording king lap

 

[Skyhook]

I've been on the hunt for one for some time now....

There was a super cool 195x one on a local CL for months and I kept contacting the guy and never heard back! Must have entered a wrong email and phone number as I was begging "with cash!!!" and never a reply... It looked MINT too and ~$600 if memory serves.... I saw a "relic'd" one that looked terrible at a local guitar store for $900 so figured $600 was a good deal.

Oh well...it's fun to hunt for gear!

Stop hunting for the crazy expensive stuff. This one currently retails at 111 € (+ whatever custom's fees you'll have to pay to get it into the States).
You'll still end up with a bargain in comparison.

https://www.thomann.de/fi/harley_benton_slider_ii_lap_steel_w_stand.htm

 

[Skyhook]

Hell yeah, I Lap Steel!
I've got a Harley Benton Slider II.
It's made of some weird composite plastic so it doesn't really scream(or even whisper) "quality" or "craftsmanship" but at this price point
(99 € when I got it and currently at 111 €), nothing else even comes close.

I had zero idea how the thing was supposed to be tuned so I Googled it when I unpacked it.
It was really out of tune out-of-the-box, but the closest match to the existing notes was the second form of C6(A-C-E-G-C-E) as per Wikipedia,
so that's what I went with. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C6_tuning )

And then a (stock) picture.

 

[bgmacaw]

I have a Rogue lap steel (aka many other brands). I'm planning on making my own someday from some reclaimed 120 year old heart of pine planks I have (provided my wife hasn't used them to prop up tomato vines). I've also made a number of 1 to 3 string lap diddly bows.

So far as playing one goes, I've not really been able to pull it off, especially in C6 tuning. I can kind of do open D/E tunings or G/A tunings but that's mostly simple blues slide riffs.

 

[mexicanyella]

I have a Rogue lap steel (aka many other brands). I'm planning on making my own someday from some reclaimed 120 year old heart of pine planks I have (provided my wife hasn't used them to prop up tomato vines). I've also made a number of 1 to 3 string lap diddly bows.

So far as playing one goes, I've not really been able to pull it off, especially in C6 tuning. I can kind of do open D/E tunings or G/A tunings but that's mostly simple blues slide riffs.

The “Hawaiian Bomb” string right in the middle of C6 tuning really threw me early on, and I tried Dobro tuning instead (low to high G B D G B D). The advantage for me was it allowed me to play full-sounding major triad accompaniment almost right away. It reduced the hurdles to holding the bar and landing accurately on the fret position I wanted.

An added benefit was it happened to get me using slants and/or pulling strings behind the bar in order to play minor chords, which meant I had to think about theory more than I was used to. Win-win.

And there’s a lot of dobro instructional material out there.

 

[Digital Larry]

A friend of mine lent me one of his Gretsches last year. I guess it's sort of a perma-loan as I perma-loaned him a 4 string bass and amplifier a few years back.

I tried the steel in D minor and D major tunings. I have worked out parts to a couple tunes I wrote but I cannot improvise quite as freely as I can on regular guitar or bass or mandolin. Just yesterday I came up with a new tune (it's just at the chord progression stage) which is similar to "Columbus Stockade" that Doc Watson used to sing. Since it is sounding more Americana than most things I do, I figure it's time to get the lap steel down again. I also put Mellotron strings on it as I have been thinking about the Moody Blues after Graeme Edge's recent passing. We'll see what happens!

 

[mexicanyella]

I got bitten badly by the lap steel bug. I’m not a huge fan of country music or Hawaiian music, but lap steels make great blues machines too. And blues is what I dooz.
View attachment 919744
Some of my treasures. Clinesmith Frying Pan. Fouke Industrial. Rickenbacher B7, Gibson EH100-7. All seven string lap steels.
All tuned to D/Dm (f D A D F# A D)

I also put together this web page of lap steel tunings,
https://papadafoe.com/lap-steel-tuning-database

When bluesin’ is what you’re doozin’, do you ever record it? I would love to hear those babies in action. Cool instruments!