Rondo lap steel control plate

Jody Perritt · Post by **Jody Perritt** » 28 Jul 2008 10:36 am

I got another Rondo a few weeks ago and it has the 'all in one' cover/control plate (its the natural one in the picture below). The volume and tone knob mounts the the same cover that goes over the saddle. I do not like the cover over the saddle, it interfers with my playing.. If I take my dremel tool to this thing I know it will end up looking bad.. I was hoping someone here might have a suggestion for a new control plate that might would work.
Someone had suggested trying the one at the link below, but Dave at Guitar Fetish said it was 5" long. I picture it being too long?
http://store.guitarfetish.com/teba51coplch.html

Ron Whitfield · Post by **Ron Whitfield** » 28 Jul 2008 10:42 am

I'd take a cutting tool of sorts and remove the cover from the control cover portion, and reshape/pretty it up, so it looks cool.

Jody Perritt · Post by **Jody Perritt** » 28 Jul 2008 10:46 am

Thanks for the reply.. I've NEVER worked with metal, so I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to "pretty it up". I've got a dremel tool, I just don't see how I'd be able smooth the edge I cut, and keep it smooth and shiny?

Mark Mansueto · Post by **Mark Mansueto** » 28 Jul 2008 11:02 am

Jody, I plan to re-rout one of mine in order to move the pots and I'm going to use black-white-black pickguard material from Stu-Mac. I've used it before and it works great and is easy to work with if you're more comfortable with plastic.

I like the way the p90 looks in your blue one. What is it?

Jody Perritt · Post by **Jody Perritt** » 28 Jul 2008 2:05 pm

Thanks for the idea Mark.. I may go that route, but I sure wish I could keep the chrome. Heck, you just make me think, I could use the chrome cover thats on the back of my blue one and use the pick gard to take its spot so that it wouldn't be noticable!

Thats a Seymour Duncan p-90.. That basic one, I think its model is sp-1? Also, I just got me a hand wound HOT P-90 from Bryan Gunsher today. I'll be routing out the natural one sometime this week! I look forward to hearing the difference between the 2.

Stephen Calhoun · Post by **Stephen Calhoun** » 28 Jul 2008 3:49 pm

I went the crude route. I haven't worked on a guitar in 30 years. Cover for innards: 99 cent piece of craft composite wood; shaped, filed, sanded, stained.

Aluminum angle; filed and the working part filed to a bevel.

Challenging part was soldering the $20 EG Select blade-style pickup's wire to the pots. For lack of the third hand... The overseas soldering job was not pretty.

The strings are just electric guitar strings. I'm putting the light set-up through its paces to not sacrifice a Jagwire C6 set until I know the breakage potential is low.

By the way, I notched the bridge by using a mallet on a paperclip to indent the bridge. An elder at Home Depot suggested this method in lieu of my purchasing a (welding) tip cleaning file.