The Steel Guitar Forum

I normally go a little less tension than that, just under 30 lbs is a target. But I also don't really fuss about it. I think I'm going to go with my original idea of matching the Dobro at 25". Thanks for the input!

I'm actually cutting wood this morning for a lap steel, it's only been a couple of years since I dreamed this up. Live edge curly spalted maple... Anyway I digress. I play two lap steels - a 23" scale National Dynamic and a 25" scale Dobro. I find the 23" scale to be a bit fiddly, I n...

EGDGBD has been my go-to tuning for a long time, since I started playing lap steel basically. If you call it G6 instead of em7/G, you might get more uptake...

Get the outside two where you want them, then do the middle two. Then work out. Then, and this is critical, remember that you play the guitar with a bar, and you rarely play the zero fret, and you always play with a greater or lesser amount of downforce, so it doesn't actually matter. I find that as...

It is identical to my Model 25, from 1935/36. Dovetail joint, no internal stick or bracing, slot headstock. Single white binding front and back, F-holes. Mine has a 14th fret neck joint, single dots on 5th to 12th fret, no markers above the 12th fret on the extension, mystery wood fretboard (def. no...

Brass is a little softer than bronze, bronze is quite low friction and somewhat harder than brass, but it's hard to tell one from the other without samples to compare. I guess the things to do are to minimize the break angle of the string over the bridge, people think you need a ton of break angle t...

I like bronze strings too, .015 - .056 covers a lot of tunings on a squareneck. You could try .013 - .056 D'Addario Chromes flatwounds if you want less string noise. But simple is best.

Kluson were almost the defacto standard for tuners back then, in terms of screw holes and spacing and what-not. Stewmac has quite good replicas, I recently bought a set of these for my 1936 Dobro. You can get the dimensions from their catalog and match to your guitar. https://www.stewmac.com/parts-a...

My rule of thumb is 25 to 30 lbs per string. What I'm implying by saying that is that 20 lbs is probably too light, and 35 lbs is probably too heavy. For me, it's probably more about feel under the bar, can I create tone (particularly on the bass strings) and do they intonate OK when I play bar-acro...

I just read this, grabbed my Dynamic and tuned to EBEG#BE, I have .013 - .056 Chromes on, and it's perfect. Nice tuning, feels natural. Aside from the major chords, how does one think of minor or 7ths with this? There is the nice minor third with the root on the G# string, that's all I can see at fi...

My tuning has two natural chords too, so I tune straight up and use vibrato. I don't sweeten any strings because what's good for the first chord is exactly wrong for the second chord, which ends up twice as far out. Yay equal temperament...

If you play guitar in normal spanish guitar tuning (EADGBE)then a really easy tuning to learn is EGDGBD. Just two strings lowered a tone, you have open G with the root on the 5th string so you can play an awful lot of stuff with that, you have the characteristic sound of the B-D on the second and fi...

Dont overlook the ultimate cheap lap steel. A set of tuners for $20, a piece of 3/4" plywood, a zerox of a fretboard, and two pieces of 1/2" angle aluminium 4" long. A little jig-saw work (or get the store to saw it to size for you), a few holes drilled, a few screws screwed and up an...

I like Zoots idea here. As regards pot value, the usual is 250K Audio taper with single coil pickups and 500K Audio with humbuckers for both tone and volume, just because people found that with those pots the tone was pleasing when tone pot was full up. The 1M pot sound, which Fender tried on the ve...

I have an old-school (like me I guess) Boss RV-2, the first digital reverb pedal according to many, and I have never looked back. How do the newer than 1986 pedals compare to the old RV-2?

I use what you call G6 on the bottom (EGDGBD), but I call it Em7/G. A double purpose tuning, because that's how I play it. For some reason, thinking of the low E as the 6th of G is meaningless to me, plus it's on the bottom so it represents a root to me. So I have two roots to choose from, minor cho...

In my experience (limited to be sure) the lowest strings are the hardest to get to ring clean. Just laying the bar on them with it's weight will not do it, they have too much mass to overcome. You need to press down on the bar to get those strings to sound clean. Anything past the third fret, your n...

I play either DGDGBD - low bass open G - or the same with a low E if I want some minor chords. I had reason to look up what Bonnie Raitt plays recently, and she quotes that same low bass open G and the same tuning one step higher - low bass open A. One thing I really like about it is that (and I kno...

For a while I had open D on my Dobro, and open E on my lap steel, just based on a different scale length and what felt good. C6, and other tunings, are where there are a dozen variations with subtle or not subtle differences, but mostly people know what you mean when you say "open D".

Playing slide vs steel. I've been playing my round-neck dobro lap-style for a year or so, tuned to open G with a low E. I play a lot of chord based things, with single note runs and such, but a lot of chords (the low E gives me m7 chords with the root on the bottom, and of course all the major chord...

Any time you have a G chord, a low E is interesting just because it makes the G into an Em7. Of course E is also the 6th of G so doubling it higher up gives options if you like the 6th tunings. If I could get a nice dominant 7th chord that would always make me happy.

"Modes" is just another way to say major scale in a key, and how chords in a key relate back to the major scale. Typical chord sequence - II/V/I. You have a chord that uses the major scale from the I chord, but starts on the second note. Then a chord that's based on the same major scale bu...

The wiring looks fine, solder joints look well flowed and shiny. Wires seem to have been left quite long, probably for future ease of changing and so that the wiring out be done outside of the compartment and then tucked back in, so it's not that well dressed. If it sounds good, it is good.

Weissenborn's often come with warnings about string gauges and tension. Gold Tone says this about that: "The total string tension exerted on ANY Gold Tone Weissenborn guitar should be no more than 165 lbs. when tuned to standard (A440) pitch." So you can probably use those strings if you t...

I woulda done something with a magnet, I think. Usually I can tape the ball ends into where they need to be, but I don't think that would work in this case. A magnet on the base plate leaning against the tailpiece, assuming something in there is ferrous.