please excuse my ignorance but

[Calvin Walley]

I have NEVER played or had any dealings with lap steels but how can a lap steel cost so much ? it looks to my UNTRAINED eye that anyone with average wood working skills could build one in just a couple of hours ..I DO NOT wish to start a argument here just asking a straight forward question

[Bill McCloskey]

"nyone with average wood working skills could build one in just a couple of hours"

I think I've owned a couple of those.

[Jerome Hawkes]

you must not visit the NP very often - people are always posting about their home-built steels - very good ones too.

[Jeff Au Hoy]

Calvin, I've been playing for a little over a decade now and have wondered the very same thing.

[Calvin Walley]

you must not visit the NP very often - people are always posting about their home-built steels - very good ones too.

that's kinda my point , but then I see some asking huge sums for a factory built guitar . my question is what makes some of them worth so much ?

[Ray Montee]

Having been exposed to any number of home made steel guitars during my playing career........

I've heard the great stories of dedication, by a builder, that admittedly knew absolutely nothing about the instrument or the finer points of playing one.

Some have had about as much musical quality as a saw horse with with fence wire for strings and a crystal set for a pickup.

My comments aren't intended to indict any builder or guitar maker however, after sixty years of playing, I still find that the prewar Rickenbacher, the entire package of Bakelite, engineering and strings
still reins far and above the average steel guitar one can find anywhere.

I had a double neck Rick with a wooden body and postwar pickups and 'the SOUND' came nowhere close to what the Bakelites produced.

Wood is wood and not all wood is the same. I feel the engineering is likewise a decisive factor in how good 'the SOUND' is likely going to be.

A piece of wood, hammered out by an enthusiastic woodworker does not necessarily make a great Stratovarious.

[Steve Branscom]

You get what you pay for. For instance a Lollar p/u to replace the string thru on a $200-$250 Supro is about $250. That's the p/u alone. Today on ebay a '54 fender champion p/u went for $350. That's the same p/u that went into a telecaster but again, that's the p/u itself. Just like spanish style guitars, a Yamaha is cheaper than a Taylor, or a Martin or a custom build. You can buy an SX lap steel for $120. A year or so ago you could get it for $100 and a case to boot. Or you can call Todd Clinesmith and get a Bigsby clone for what, $2750 and up. I bought a cheap Danville chinese dobro for $150. No matter what I did it was never as good as the $2000 Mike Auldridge Gibson I bought. In essence, they are simple. In practice, as Ray as said, there's a little bit more that goes into them to make them more expensive.

[Robert Allen]

I doubt that an average woodworker could build a decent lap steel in a couple of hours. To build a structurally sound lap steel with good tone requires advanced woodworking skills, a knowledge of electronics as well as knowing which parts are needed to produce a quality sound, and then paying for good parts. And, of course, a lot of tools. You might be able to make one with a hand saw, a hand drill, some files and sandpaper but building a good quality lap steel means having a table saw with a $100 blade, a planer, jointer, router, drill press, belt sander, spindle sander, several templates, an assortment of glues and tapes, and a $1000 vacuum system so you don't choke on the sawdust. Then, there is the sprayer, paint and finishing supplies, the soldering equipment and good soldering skills. I've made 270 assorted laps, consoles, and double neck steels and I agree that the equipment costs are spread out over the years but things do wear out and need to be replaced. A router bit is $26, a set of nut files $300 and so forth. I don't think any small builder is getting rich making lap steels. My average working time on a lap steel is 15 hours at less than minimum wage. It's something builders do because they love the steel guitar. Lessons, guitar repairs, and sales in the store pay rather well but if I had to depend on building lap steels to make a living, I'd be down at the soup kitchen begging for food.

[Jim Williams]

They're not all expensive. You can buy a totally playable beginner's instrument in the $100 - $200 range with several choices in that range. Like any other instrument though, there is a difference in a cheap one and a good one. Different woods produce different sound characteristics as well as the difference between a good pickup designed for steel and a cheap generic pickup.

[John Rosett]

I just got done building an 8 string lap steel(pictured below). I spent about $200 on parts, and spent about 10 hours building it. I charge $25/hour for my house painting business, so let's say I have $450 invested.
My guitar came out pretty nice, but the people that I know who build guitars for a living do much better work than I do, and I would expect them to charge more. So, I would say; try building one yourself, and then see if you think that others are charging too much.

[Jim Williams]

That's really pretty.

[John Rosett]

Thanks. It looks pretty good from a distance.

[George Piburn]

"I see some asking huge sums for a factory built guitar"

In Actuality None of the Lap Steel Guitars Made in the United States of America are made in a Factory.

Further: Lap Steel Guitars that are made in Factory's are the Least Expensive and most widely available.

Examples:
Rouge 69 bucks
Rondo 100 bucks
Jersey Lightning 149 bucks
Gretch 359 bucks

Hopefully this helps to address your observation.

Best Regards

[Mike D]

I've made steels in a weekend from scraps of mahogany with angle iron bridges and lo-cost pickups and tuners....and I've made steels that took me 150 hours of work from figured koa with $450 pickups, custom bridges, binding and inlay.

Which do you want/can you afford?

[Calvin Walley]

just to be clear :
I have 0 interest in ever buying one.
I'm a pedal player, but I always wondered why the huge price tag

[Joe Naylor]

There are cheap ones I have bought some for kids to get started.

But just try to build one - there is more to making a good sounding steel than meets the eye.

Joe

[Danny James]

"it looks to my UNTRAINED eye that anyone with average wood working skills could build one in just a couple of hours"

Calvin, A person like you describe, once they had a pattern cut out, could probably saw out the guitar body on a bandsaw providing he had one, in a couple of hours.

However--- First it would be wise to do research, for example, to learn what distance will work best for you between the bridge and the nut, which can affect both tone and playability. That in itself will require the fret spacing to also then be calculated correctly, or the guitar will never sound in tune at all frets.

Then would you buy a pickup, or like I did, do more research, and build your own pickup winding machine ? And then build your own pickup bobbin, and wind your own pickup, which I then sent mine to my friend Rick Aiello to install special Neodymium magnets in a pickup housing he made & nickel plated for me.

You would need to do more research to know how to wire the pickup to the tone & volume potentiometers, & resistor, -- if--- you choose to install them. Some builders wire the pickup directly to the guitar plug jack, and get their tone and volume from the amplifier alone. The type of material you choose to make the guitar out of will greatly affect the tone as well. I know our friend Ray Montee touched on that earlier.

So from my very incomplete description, I would imagine you can see why it's really impossible to build a decent playing & sounding lap steel guitar in a couple of hours.

I have been "attempting" to play steel guitars since 1948, when I was 10. It was the first and only lapsteel guitar that I have built. It was completed about 8 yrs. ago. I went so far as to design and build a tuning changer in it as well. So it has 4 different tunings available on it.

I guess I tinkered with that whole project over a period of about 2 yrs. off and on, before I got it to where I was finally pretty satisfied with it.

It was a fun and rewarding project, but, I have no idea the amount of hours & money I have invested.

[JW Adams]

i live in the Philippines now and went to 2 guitar factories in China 6 weeks ago,and found this for $50 each in container loads about $20 each without the electronics and turners, that you could provide in the USA, try competing with that,the music instrument company's in the USA are going to Asia for their instruments soon ,all but the custom stuff that will range from $5,000 on up built in the USA, sad but true

[George Piburn]

I am Guessing you are asking about Sierra and MSA Lap Steels?

If you will please specify which Lap Steel Guitar Factory's you are talking about.

Folks in this section would be better able to make more informed responses.

Photos will also help.

As it stands so far this has turned into a Frenzy of speculation and general confusion.

Everyone wants to be able to help and give informed responses to your request for information.

Best Regards

[Bill Hatcher]

your ignorance is excused.

[Calvin Walley]

what I am talking about is something like the Rouge that many music stores sell for about $79.00 vs some older brands and some home builts that sell for anywhere from $400.00 to $2500.00
the wood can't be a major factor , I ran a imported /domestic lumber company for years . the kind of wood can only account for a small part of the overall cost, I can understand a $200.00 price tag but $2000.00 ? the damn thing would have to be plated with 14 kt gold...
but in the end I guess it just comes down to is
what they can get someone to pay is what they ask for
I don't think there really is an answer to my question so
B0b you can close this

[Mike Neer]

Calvin, those of us who play them understand.

[Iestyn Lewis]

Small builders have to pay retail for everything. The pickup costs $100, the tuners cost $80, the electronics cost $10, the wood costs $30, the misc. supplies cost $30, the finishing materials cost $25. That's $275 right there, and all you have is a pile of parts.

Surely you are being facetious with your "couple of hours" comment. Let's take 10 hours as a reasonable number for a single worker. This would assume you ALREADY have templates for everything, all necessary tools on hand, etc.

What do you feel is a reasonable amount for labor? $10/hr? Add at minimum then $100 for labor, and you have $375.

The Rogue costs $79 because they are paying next to nothing for all of the parts, they are building hundreds of them at once, and they are paying each worker perhaps $4.00 an hour (at the very high end). They are probably produced in a plant that produces regular 6 stringers, so the paint booth, bandsaws, etc., are all being employed at full blast, and the time to produce one probably is far less than 2 hours. This is what Henry Ford figured out so many years ago.

Because the low-end is so well served by the mass-produced steels, most hobbyist and domestic builders target the high end. If you target the high end, you do the best you can to produce a steel which is visually or sonically distinctive, and try to ask a price which at least reflects a little of the time you have in it.

Your question boils down to "why won't a domestic builder sell a steel that they built for less than half the cost of parts?" Why would they? There is nothing particularly technically complex about building a lap steel, which is why homebuilts are so popular, but it does take time.

[Richard Sinkler]

I have NEVER played or had any dealings with lap steels but how can a lap steel cost so much ? it looks to my UNTRAINED eye that anyone with average wood working skills could build one in just a couple of hours ..I DO NOT wish to start a argument here just asking a straight forward question

I softened wondered the same thing. some I see I can't understand the costs. But, there are the few (maybe more than a few) that make ornate, quality instruments with first class parts that may just justify the cost. I have seen some that I think aren't priced high enough.

[Richard Sinkler]

By the way Calvin. I know you went through some tough times and kind of went under the radar here. It is nice to see you back and active again.