The Steel Guitar Forum

In an effort to improve the tone of the Hawaiian Guitar I designed and built this instrument about two years ago. The body is much bigger than a jumbo guitar, the bridge that I built from scratch is moved down towards the bottom of the table, which, in order to retain the string length, shortens the neck. Like a Weissenborn, this makes almost the whole body a resonant chamber. The sound is much sweeter than a Dobro, but is not very loud. With all the sound reflections going on inside the body it sounds like an acoustic version of an echo chamber, so there are a lot of overtones. The internal barring is fanned out from under the bridge, but because the bridge is further back it looks quite different inside than a Martin or a classical.



(The lining is much better than it looks in the photo...)

Ingenius design ! I'll bet it has a very sweet sound. Could you send us some of your playing ?

Alan, on any of those wonderful CD's you sent to me, is there a track with this guitar on it? If so, I can post a link to the sound-file.

I bet it's loud.

You must have one huge lap!

basilh wrote:Alan, on any of those wonderful CD's you sent to me, is there a track with this guitar on it? If so, I can post a link to the sound-file.

No, at the time I recorded those CD's I hadn't built this instrument. Now that there's some interest I'll record something. Thanks for offering to host the soundclips.

That's a beautiful instrument. What tuning do you use on it?

I'll guess at A6th !!

As Basil guessed, it's A6.

Alan,
Nice looking guitar...if you are intrerested in knowing why it doesn't work, email me and I'll be happy to give you my input...it's too long to add to this thread.
Cheers, Ron

Elva West just made an accoustic 6 string steel guitar which looks awesome and it sounds great. I tried it out and I was surprised of the action and sound. Actually it is semi hollow body but it sounds like a true hollow body steel guitar.
He may send some pictures to the forum.