The Steel Guitar Forum

Minnie never played the big humbucking pickup. She played a New Yorker with the blade pickup in the bridge, and later an Aristocrat with a smaller pickup at the neck and a "Bridge-Tone" unit inside the bridge.

Up for sale is a National Sonora built around 1939. This is a very historically important guitar, as it was the first model to feature two pickups. It's also exceptionally rare; few were built, and even fewer survive. The guitar features a 17" hollow body built of laminated spruce and maple; it...

Up for sale is a Carvin model #2 steel built in the early 1950s. This rare model has two 8-string necks, each with its own Alnico pickup which is a bit warmer than later Carvins I've played. The steel is mostly original, though the neck selector switch and the jack plate appear to be replacements. A...

Up for sale is an early '50s Rickenbacker SW8 lap steel. It shows some wear but is structurally fine. All the components are original, the pickup is nice and strong, and the string balance is excellent. It comes with the original hard case. I'm asking $1200 including Paypal fees and shipping within ...

The amp is a Champ identical to the one on the right. The Bronco was not made with a blackface panel or without trem.

Most of my favorite-sounding steels are in the 22-23" area, but longer scales make it easier to get the intonation sounding right. I also find it easier to slant on longer scales because I'm less likely to overshoot.

I use the extra strings, or at least one of them - my ideal neck has 7 strings. It helps fill out my A6 tuning with the root on the bottom.

Wood saddles in aluminum castings weren't a new idea with these steels. The idea was to make them easy to replace, as with earlier National-Dobro instruments.

I'm not saying it won't work, just that it's not what an original setup looks like.

The pot on the left is a replacement, but the rest of the wiring is original.



Here is another original one:

Chris Clem wrote:This is what your wiring should look like.

Not exactly; this one has a newer cap and it is not wired like the originals. The cap was wired between the tone pot and ground, not between the pots.

They all had wooden saddles. Many were painted to blend in, but I have never seen one with an actual metal saddle.

A pot with a switch on it is a replacement part, though.

Would these be the original tuners? Are they Grovers? Those are Waverlys, and they were one of the stock tuners that came on these. Noah, is that the prototype that has solid head stock? I ordered the golden age set. Lets see what happens...Its odd how 1936 used an A serial number and others had N....

I think yours had the same tuners as mine; they were Grovers, but nobody makes a drop-in replacement anymore including Grover. I fitted mine with the same set of Stew-Mac Kluson copies, but only one hole lined up well enough to insert a screw. In practice, one screw is all you need to keep the tuner...

Some of these had strip tuners originally.

Of the individual tuners, National used a bunch of different ones. Without knowing the screw spacings, we can't say which - if any - modern replacements will fit without additional surgery.

An amp like an AC15 essentially has two stages of amplification: the preamp, where the tone is shaped, effects are introduced, and the volume is set; and the power amp, which takes the output of the preamp and converts it to a signal that can drive the speakers. This is a bit of an oversimplificatio...

I really like this, but frankly it's redundant with my other Ricks. It's not mint, but quite clean with no major dings. The pots are original and in good working order. The pickup is loud and bright, and the case is in excellent condition with all of the latches working. I'm asking $SOLD including P...

Thanks Noah have you ever seen one of those record players I thought that it was some thing that my grandmother got that came as they set of three? Magnatone sold PA amps and indeed record players, though I don't think any of those sold in large numbers. This is the only catalog I have showing them...

My gut feeling is $3-400 each for the steel and the amp, so $600-800 for the pair. That assumes they're both in good working order. I actually think that the record player would be easier to sell without the others, and the steel/amp would be easier to sell without the record player. Most likely, tw...

Clip-on tuners usually work when clipped to tuner buttons, though they can be unreliable this way and of course you have to move the tuner when it's time to tune that string. I often use a tuner with a mic and 1/4" input like the Korg GA Custom for steels. It's often good enough to use the buil...

Bob Snelgrove wrote:So, how do these sound compared to others from this era?

bob

It's the same 23" scale and same string-through pickup that most Valco steels had in the '50s/'60s. Similarly bright and slightly raw tone.

$4-600 is about the going rate for this model; I'd say 4-5 in this condition. As with any reasonably common model, it can take some time to find the right buyer. 150 would be an outrageously good deal for any Supro in original, working condition.

I never really thought about this, so I did an A/B with my Beard 7-string taking one of the strings off. There was no noticeable difference in volume, but the tone was noticeably better with that 7th string on there. It was more balanced, with less flub in the bass.

If all you need a mic for is "Thank you" and "This next song is called...", you could just run it through the amp and maybe dispense with a PA.

Bump!