Magnatone Lap Steel...

Ron Bednar · From: Rancho Cordova, California, USA

Hi All – I picked up an interesting little Magnatone lap steel awhile back. The body is stamped sheet metal with under coating inside, same as a car. The tail piece is a headless tuning system of sorts. The string posts have a slight taper with a cupped bottom where a small, strong spring sits and pressures the peg up into it's hole in the composite tail piece. An Allen wrench is used to turn the post to tension the string. Impressive engineering design...if it had worked. Problem is when changing strings, it's almost impossible to thread the string cleanly through the hole in the post and out the back. Also, the larger strings can only get one wrap around the post and tend to get cut by the edge of the string hole. And the posts tend to break easily, which happened to me. Other than that it's a great playing and sounding guitar. Wondering if anyone else has ever had experience with one of these and what your solution was. I'm thinking that some sort of key less tuners may work as a replacement for the tail block...any and all suggestions appreciated.
Cheers, Ron

[This message was edited by Ron Bednar on 30 November 2005 at 04:08 PM.]

Al Marcus · From: Cedar Springs,MI USA (deceased)

Ron-Magnatone was always trying out things. Did you ever see one with 6 pushbuttons that changed the chord or tuning. Solonoid operated, made a noise like a rifle shot when you pushed one.....al

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My Website..... www.cmedic.net/~almarcus/

Ron Bednar · From: Rancho Cordova, California, USA

No Al, never ran into one of those...but you gotta hand it to them, inovation was a questionable hallmark for Magnatones...unfortunately, common sense isn't one of mine!
Cheers, Ron

George Keoki Lake · From: Edmonton, AB., Canada

Yah Al...how true! I recall Margie Mays, who is an excellent steel player, had (and probably still has), one of those solinoid guitars. Hers was not quite as noisy, however every time she pushed one of those buttons there was a definite bang. The prinipal was great...6 tunings on a single neck guitar. I wonder if it could ever be re-engineered to today's electronic standards ? I'll bet it would work great.

AJ Azure · From: Massachusetts, USA * R.I.P.

HA! I bid on this eBay find. Glad it went to a forum member.Assuming it's the same one ...

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