What kind of pickup works best for a lap steel?

[Blue Bill]

I'm smitten by Megan Lovells steel playing in the Larkin Poe videos. I'm thinking about building a Tele style lap guitar, since I have a Tele bridge, with saddles, in my parts bin, along with a set of Grovers and a Tele control plate.

Has anyone built one, or have suggestions on what type of pickups work for this application? The bridge is cut out for a single coil, but if a humbucker or P90 is way better, I can modify or replace the bridge.

Thanks!!

 

[teletimetx]

Everybody is entitled to the favorite, but:

"Unlike the neck pickup, which was designed specifically for the Tele, the earliest bridge pickups were adapted from a pickup Fender was already manufacturing for lap steels.
...
In fact, many old Fender Champion lap steels had their original pickups scavenged after Keith Richards’ tech revealed that he had been installing them in his boss’s guitars. Until recently, these easy-to-find pickups were an affordable way into vintage Tele tone. Depending on the magnet wire, they ohm out between 5.8K and 8K. The lower DC reading equates to a clear, harmonically rich and trebly tone, while the hotter ones sound more like Broadcaster pickups.

The rectangular bottom flats have to be trimmed to fit and a metal baseplate must be attached, but otherwise the specs are almost identical to the bridge pickups on many of the earliest Esquires and Broadcasters. These included 43-gauge wire and alnico III slugs that were level with the top of the flatwork. However, the diameter of the guitar pickup slugs was slightly wider."

https://guitar.com/guides/essential-guide/all-about-telecaster-bridge-pickups/

Not exactly the same, but the ordinary tele bridge pickup was adapted from the lap steel pickup. You could start with a tele bridge pickup and not be very far off.

but there's a few more folks on here that will know this kind of stuff in better detail than I do.

 

[cnlbb]

So Larkin Poe is using an old bakelite Rickenbacker with a horseshoe pickup. To get her sound you'd need something similar which are rare and expensive. (Lollar's repro horseshoe pickup (the only fairly close horseshoe repro that I know of*) is $600). That said like guitar there are a pile of pickups out there that do different things for lapsteel, but the one that I feel walks the line between snarling blues, sharp country, and sweet Hawaiian best is the Lollar chicago. It's hot and vintage and weird in all the ways that make some rarer old pickups great.

Another thing to note is that tuning is a part of lap steel sound and as she started on dobro she's stayed with the GBDGBD tuning. Which is great since if you're new to this it's an easy one to grasp. (At least until you want to play a minor chord ).


*I remembered that Clinesmith has horseshoes on some of his models but he doesn't sell pickups unless they're in one of his instruments.

**If you're trying to stay with more budget friendly pickups, a hot P90 is likely the best option. But hot... not surface of the sun 1990s style.

 

[Mojohand40]

I've been through a few, really a matter of taste. In this Rogue, I put in a EMG Select passive Strat type pup. It's better than the original, and I didn't have to worry about the poles lining up with the strings. Sometimes this can be an issue as the smaller gauge strings may not be as loud as the heavier gauges, so it's uneven. Not always an issue, depends on string gauge a lot.

on the green monster, I put in lip stick pups. These are really good for a high lonesome sound (whine). Again, no poles to align with strings.

 

[Recce]

Probably something like hey darlin’ do you like how I play those notes with this tube?

 

[Peegoo]

You can use any pickup you like. The original Broadcaster was an adaptation of the steel guitar; it was the next logical step up from the original aluminum Rickenbacker "frying pan" guitar. So a Tele bridge pickup will work great in a lap steel. A P90 also kills in a lap steel.

One of the indications that a lap steel seller knows little about how it works is when they install a bridge that has moveable saddles. Many modern lap steels (even expensive ones) have this type of bridge because builders usually start with guitars, and then one day they look at their parts and think, "hey...let's build some laps."

Intonation for each string is set by the position of the steel on the string, not the comparative length of the strings. There are no frets, so the strings are not stretched when played as on a tyipcal guitar. This stretching to fret a string is the compensation that bridge intonation provides.

There's certainly nothing wrong with using a bridge that has individual string saddles because you can set them all straight across so all strings are the same length. But that's an added expense. A lap steel bridge can be a very simple piece of hardware.

Here's the bridge on my 1955 Rickenbacker; it's molded Bakelite, and is not adjustable for height or string length:

You can make your own killer-sounding lap steel from a 30" length of 2x4, two 2" pieces of 1/2" diameter steel rod or all-thread, and a few specialty items like a pickup, tuners, and volume and tone pots and a jack. And you could even make your own tuners and pickup, and forget the volume and tone controls and go straight to the amp.

Here's a cheap lap steel that was designed by people who knew what they were doing.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Z7CN8CQ/?tag=tdpri-20

 

[Mojohand40]

You can use any pickup you like. The original Broadcaster was an adaptation of the steel guitar; it was the next logical step up from the original aluminum Rickenbacker "frying pan" guitar. So a Tele bridge pickup will work great in a lap steel. A P90 also kills in a lap steel.

One of the indications that a lap steel seller knows little about how it works is when they install a bridge that has moveable saddles. Many modern lap steels (even expensive ones) have this type of bridge because builders usually start with guitars, and then one day they look at their parts and think, "hey...let's build some laps."

Intonation for each string is set by the position of the steel on the string, not the comparative length of the strings. There are no frets, so the strings are not stretched when played as on a tyipcal guitar. This stretching to fret a string is the compensation that bridge intonation provides.

There's certainly nothing wrong with using a bridge that has individual string saddles because you can set them all straight across so all strings are the same length. But that's an added expense. A lap steel bridge can be a very simple piece of hardware.

Here's the bridge on my 1955 Rickenbacker; it's molded Bakelite, and is not adjustable for height or string length:

You can make your own killer-sounding lap steel from a 30" length of 2x4, two 2" pieces of 1/2" diameter steel rod or all-thread, and a few specialty items like a pickup, tuners, and volume and tone pots and a jack. And you could even make your own tuners and pickup, and forget the volume and tone controls and go straight to the amp.

Here's a cheap lap steel that was designed by people who knew what they were doing.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Z7CN8CQ/?tag=tdpri-20

Nice..
On the green double neck I posted above, I made the bridges and nuts from aluminum angle. Replaced the saddles that were on it.
On another I did the same with the bridge, but used a old "Hawaiian nut" for the nut. These were nuts made to slip over existing nuts on acoustics to make them playable in lap style. They work great on lap steels and are usually pretty cheap.

 

[dannyh]

Gibson use to make a steel guitar version of the Charlie Christian pickup (less the three bolt bracket attach thingy). A lot of guys use to rob those for Tele neck pickups (I THINK Redd V has one in a Tele). More to your question though, Lollar makes a Tele bridge version of the CC, they call it a BS I think. It's a great sounding pickup, and I've always thought it would sound great in a lap steel. Never actually heard one in that application though...

 

[telemnemonics]

I'd urge not angling the pickup.
Leo thought it was a good idea but many including the steel you want the sound of do not employ an angle that makes the high E brighter and thinner toned than the other strings.

A Tele bridge pickup mounted to the wood with no angle is a good choice though, since there are tons of them available and they are a known entity, you can choose a hotter one if you amp seems to respond less than ideally to the first pickup.

Are you getting a special amp for the steel guitar target sound?
If not, you may be swapping pickups to make up for the lack of the rest of her signal chain.

 

[mexicanyella]

Tuning, picking technique vs bare-fingered, slide selection, string attachment hardware and signal path downstream of the lap steel all introduce so many variables that A pickup recommendation seems like shooting blind without more info.

It would also be good to know whether a player was after a dirty, bluesy slide sound or leaning more to the Western swing/pedal steel clean end of the spectrum.

I started on a Fender six-string with a pole-less single coil and beefy steel hardware. I loved looking at it but couldn’t bond with its hard, bright tonal character (lack of chops didn’t help). I moved to sort of a mystery steel, I think from the 40s, called a Roy Bert. It has a crude blade pickup with pieces of magnetite clamped between the blades and has a softer, less focused sound, and even though I play bare-fingered and try for clean pedal-steel-ish tone, I get along better with that.

Try a bunch of stuff; it’s not necessarily intuitive coming from guitar.

 

[lathoto]

Drop a Barden into it.

 

[telemnemonics]

I have an original Fender Champion lap steel pickup and an original Fender 8 string pedal steel pickup.
The Champion is weak and thin sounding, which is I guess typical of some steel pickups. Same with the 8 string, weak low output.
Others seem to be way hotter with additional coil and magnet.
The amps used for a signature lap steel/ pedal steel tone vary as much as the players.
I'd try to get as close to the same pickup as she uses on the recordings you like best.
Does she only play one lap steel on every recording you like?
Players like Cooder and Lindley seem to go to great lengths to get just the right pickup, and have recognizable sounds.
Yet steel players will warn against assuming that the sound comes from this or that component.

 

[bottlenecker]

I'm smitten by Megan Lovells steel playing in the Larkin Poe videos. I'm thinking about building a Tele style lap guitar, since I have a Tele bridge, with saddles, in my parts bin, along with a set of Grovers and a Tele control plate.

Has anyone built one, or have suggestions on what type of pickups work for this application? The bridge is cut out for a single coil, but if a humbucker or P90 is way better, I can modify or replace the bridge.

Thanks!!

The tele bridge pickup was a lap steel pickup first. The original idea of the telecaster as stolen from Paul Bigsby, was a steel guitar tone from a fretted guitar.
I play a '50s Fender Champion lap steel and it has a '50s tele pickup in it,and it is great, classic lap steel sound. Instant western swing and bakersfield honky tonk tone when plugged into almost anything, and my favorite lap steel sound.
So if you are going to use tele bridge, I'd recommend a '50s style tele pickup. Don't get an overwound one. The extra treble is great for steel. Keep tone knob in the middle.

Remember not to compensate saddles for steel. Use straight saddles and line them up, or even drill and tap a single bar to replace all three saddles if you're able.

 

[muscmp]

just like changing pickups on a guitar, it will be what sound and type of music you wish to play. if you have extra pickups, tentatively hook them up and try them until you find the one you like.

i have a couple lap steels: a recent asher lap steel with humbuckers in open D. this thing has a really hot sound. i have a 1949c. gibson br9 lap steel with a p13 pickup in it, tuned to c6. this has a country flavor like the old pedal steel sound and is a lot of fun to play. also have a 1942-46c. national lap steel with a string through pickup that gives a very strong sound, tuned to open D. it is probably my favorite pickup.

play music!

 

[jondanger]

I used one of these on my Silvertone that had a dead P13 in it. A little more economical than a horseshoe, more distinctive than a guitar pickup. I have been happy with it, although I’m not very good at playing the thing yet.

https://www.lollarguitars.com/lollar-steel-guitar-pickups/string-through-steel

 

[cnlbb]

I hate to say it on this forum, but the telecaster bridge/champ pickup isn't - imo - a good lap steel pickup. For evidence, it's really not used by any builders these days and the champ model it was used in aren't exactly sought after. The closest thing to it that non-pedal steel players like is the stringmaster and those used two fender single-coils with a different base/sound to get what it was after. (Additionally they were often a long scale which helps).

To my ears most champ style lap steels sound thin and a bit weak. There's a reason why the good early lap steels had cc blades (gibson), horseshoe, string through, etc... and the modern slide instruments tend to lean towards humbuckers & p90ish pickups.

There's a misconception that guitar rules apply to lap steels & it's only kinda true. They're their own instrument/beast and somethings like the angled pickups, adjustable saddles (I do have one lap steel with adjustable saddles that were set straight once and left there), etc... are carried over when they shouldn't have been. If this all becomes a bit much the good fellow over at the Steel Guitar Forum are very helpful and reply at a bit slower rate.

 

[Peegoo]

Here's some more lap steel p0rn:

 

[crazydave911]

My two lapsteels,one of which I built both have humbuckers. Then again I play exclusively C6. But the glassy smooth sound I love

Dave

 

[Mojohand40]

My big old slab of maple Morrell has a Kent Armstrong Hot Rails dual blade Humbucker pup. (hr1r..? I think) Gives me a pretty decent thick tone.
I forgot where I got the nut for this one, used on EBAY I think.

 

[Blue Bill]

Yikes, thanks everyone, that's a lot of info!

Everybody is entitled to the favorite, but:

"Unlike the neck pickup, which was designed specifically for the Tele, the earliest bridge pickups were adapted from a pickup Fender was already manufacturing for lap steels.
...
In fact, many old Fender Champion lap steels had their original pickups scavenged after Keith Richards’ tech revealed that he had been installing them in his boss’s guitars. Until recently, these easy-to-find pickups were an affordable way into vintage Tele tone. Depending on the magnet wire, they ohm out between 5.8K and 8K. The lower DC reading equates to a clear, harmonically rich and trebly tone, while the hotter ones sound more like Broadcaster pickups.

The rectangular bottom flats have to be trimmed to fit and a metal baseplate must be attached, but otherwise the specs are almost identical to the bridge pickups on many of the earliest Esquires and Broadcasters. These included 43-gauge wire and alnico III slugs that were level with the top of the flatwork. However, the diameter of the guitar pickup slugs was slightly wider."

https://guitar.com/guides/essential-guide/all-about-telecaster-bridge-pickups/

Not exactly the same, but the ordinary tele bridge pickup was adapted from the lap steel pickup. You could start with a tele bridge pickup and not be very far off.

but there's a few more folks on here that will know this kind of stuff in better detail than I do.

Thanks Teletime, The thing that got me started is that I already have a Fender Tele bridge, with 6 adjustable saddles, hanging around in my parts bin. I thought I had an extra bridge pickup somewhere, but when i went looking for it, it's nowhere to be found.

So Larkin Poe is using an old bakelite Rickenbacker with a horseshoe pickup. To get her sound you'd need something similar which are rare and expensive. (Lollar's repro horseshoe pickup (the only fairly close horseshoe repro that I know of*) is $600). That said like guitar there are a pile of pickups out there that do different things for lapsteel, but the one that I feel walks the line between snarling blues, sharp country, and sweet Hawaiian best is the Lollar chicago. It's hot and vintage and weird in all the ways that make some rarer old pickups great.

Another thing to note is that tuning is a part of lap steel sound and as she started on dobro she's stayed with the GBDGBD tuning. Which is great since if you're new to this it's an easy one to grasp. (At least until you want to play a minor chord ).


*I remembered that Clinesmith has horseshoes on some of his models but he doesn't sell pickups unless they're in one of his instruments.

**If you're trying to stay with more budget friendly pickups, a hot P90 is likely the best option. But hot... not surface of the sun 1990s style.

Thanks cnlbb, Yeah, I'm not looking to spend $600 for a pickup, for my first lap. Actually I had one in the '80s, I never used it, so I gave it to a friend who was opening a pizza shop, and he was decorating the walls with musical instruments. That Lollar Chicago looks like a good one, for less than a third of the price of the horseshoe. I have an Epiphone P909 style one, that looks like this:



Except, with a red wire. Problem is, I would have to hacksaw the Tele bridge to make it fit. My idea is to make a sort of a "Lap-Tele", with a Tele-shaped headstock, a Tele-like body with a cutaway, and a Tele control plate, which I already have. I may be jousting at windmills.

I've been through a few, really a matter of taste. In this Rogue, I put in a EMG Select passive Strat type pup. It's better than the original, and I didn't have to worry about the poles lining up with the strings. Sometimes this can be an issue as the smaller gauge strings may not be as loud as the heavier gauges, so it's uneven. Not always an issue, depends on string gauge a lot.

View attachment 818349


on the green monster, I put in lip stick pups. These are really good for a high lonesome sound (whine). Again, no poles to align with strings.
View attachment 818352

Mojo, I love the look of that Rogue. I'm guessing a Charlie Chistian would sound nice, but they are also wicked expensive.