The Steel Guitar Forum

Hi All -

I have just acquired this 1938 Console grande.

The tone(?) pot is frozen. In order to see if it is savable I'm thinking I'll need to take it off the guitar & flood it with DeOxit or similar. I'm not sure how to remove the electronics as there are no control plates or access panels. Does everything come out of the pick up cavities? Am I missing something obvious? I do see that the pick ups are held in by screws that come from underneath.

The pickup on the back neck is not functional so I'm going to have to have that looked at. I guess Lindy Fralin & Jason Lollar are the guys to talk to about re-winding.

I want to proceed carefully seeing as this is a reasonably rare & old guitar.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Carl Leyland.
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Carl Leyland wrote:Hi All -

I have just acquired this 1938 Console Grande.

The tone(?) pot is frozen. In order to see if it is savable I'm thinking I'll need to take it off the guitar....

I have one of these guitars and it has a similar problem.
See it here: http://www.pixenbar.com/images/Gibson_C ... e-1940.htm
I love this guitar although my pots are stiff but not frozen. I have opted to use an external pedal on mine. I believe that access to the control cavity is realized by removing the metal plate which surrounds the pickup on the lower neck.

Do you have the mute mechanism which has been removed in the picture you included? These are very desirable (to me) and as far as I can tell they only appeared on the 1938 models.

Hi & many thanks for your input.

That is a beautiful steel you have there.

The volume on mine is stiff for sure, but usable.

The external pedal is a good idea - I have one of those new Fender tone/vol deals.

The 1938 model is slightly different to yours in that it doesn't have the metal plates.

I'm hoping they didn't just seal the electronics in on mine!

I don't have the string mutes unfortunately. The screw holes are there where the mechanism once sat - bummer!

Carl.

I have some pictures of the ultra-rare albeit far less versatile D6 variant here:
http://www.pixenbar.com/images/
This too is a late model (1940) version.

I had one of the Fender Vol/Tone swivel pedals too. I traded it for a telecaster about 20 years ago. They are pretty nice.

I look forward to hearing how you resolve this challenge.

-E

Eugene -

That's a cool guitar. Must have been a special order, I imagine. Are you the owner?

I'm considering the idea of having someone make a replica of the mute mechanism for me.

I guess people took them off because they interfered with the picking hand positioning?

Best!
Carl.

No; I do not own that D-6.

While certainly the rarest variation (for good reason) it is also the least desirable. I am still wishing that I had a D-8 instead of a D-7/8.

That one sold on eBay a while back. I think it went for more than $800. Too much for a D6 in my household. At $500 I would have considered it but probably would not have bid even at that price.

-E

Beautiful guitars! I have a 1950 and have wanted to hear one of those with the CC pickups.
Carl, is that guitar the one Joel Paterson owned?

Hi Mark -

No, it's not the one that Joel sold. I narrowly missed that one, which is ironic since I play (piano) with him sometimes.

This one was on Craigslist in Gulfport, MS. Luckily I had a friend down there who was willing to go do the deal & pick it up for me.

I won't comment on the tone yet because only one neck is working & the tone control is frozen on high.

Joel did tell me that one issue with those model is that both pickups are on all the time (that's why they had string mutes for a while). He had rigged his with a selector switch.

Another interesting thing about mine is that it has no legs - that means for sure, it's one of the early ones.

All the best.
Carl.

Well, good luck with it. It is a beauty.

I do enjoy the CD you did with Joel. That must have been fun to do. Didn't know you were a steel player as well. Cool.

Thanks!
I started with a 6 string lap steel a few months back. I'm having a lot of fun learning something new.
Carl.

REMOVED

Many thanks.

Michael Lee Allen,

What a pleasant surprise to see the shot of the original Sacred Steel cassette/booklet album. Back in about 1995, Mike Newton helped me identify Henry Harrison's old 1940s stair-step Kay lap steel,which is pictured in the album booklet. He also led me to the 1956 D8 Stringmaster which I played for 14 years and recently sold to Doug Beaumier.

The combined knowledge of old lap steels you and Mike Newton possess is mind boggling.

Best,

Bob

Carl Leyland wrote:Another interesting thing about mine is that it has no legs - that means for sure, it's one of the early ones.

All the best.
Carl.

Carl; in my opinion the legs on the pre-war Console Grandes were only good for generating business for instrument repair people.

-E

Yes - I'm told they weren't very sturdy.

Carl Leyland wrote:Yes - I'm told they weren't very sturdy.

Sturdy they are; "STABLE" they are not.

REMOVED

Well, here's my bizarro Console! D-7. The pups look like CC's, but they ain't. They have adjustable polepieces. Look where the knobs are. And legs? Two. Yup! Anybody got any ideas about this one? Anybody got a 7-string bridge, so I can restore the guitar?

I'm no expert but I saw in the Gibson steel guitar book that the original Fuller prototype design drawing looks a lot like what you have there i.e. two necks with no middle piece between. Apparently the first console grande (pre production) went to Jerry Yeomans who was with Rudy Vallee's orchestra. Maybe you have something similar or someone copied the original drawing to make their own version?

It's definitely a Gibson. The pups are sort of in-between the CCs and the next version. The long legs have two strange feet on the bottom, and had holes in them that, to me at least, indicated that they were screwed to some sort of platform. That's how I use it. It's quite stable that way. The huge MOP block markers are unusual too. The binding indicates that this is the way it came from the Gibson factory. I'd always assumed it was a custom order, and that it was a '39.
This guitar was played! If you look at the pickup pic, you can see the added "Boo-Wah" lever. The bottom neck had some sort of primitive pullers on it. Probably E to A. Solid black, giant pearl blocks? Musta gone to someone well-known, or someone with bucks to spare. I need to get some "period correct" knobs, and another bridge.

Hmm, I wondered what that lever was. Is it spring loaded?

No, it's just connected to a 1 meg pot. It works really well. But when I restore the guitar, it will be eliminated. here's a pic of the inside of the guitar. You can see that the pups, though they look like CCs, they are not. I just figured it was a 39 or 40 because the pup seemed to be an evolution between the CC and what finally became the P-90 style.

OK. I see.
One thing though - it's my understanding that the pickups that followed the Charlie Christians i.e. the oval shape ones are not P90s. They don't have adjustable pole pieces & they don't sound like p90s (I was told that by Joel Paterson who has owned Console Grandes with all three types of pickup). So, I don't know why yours would have the adjustable (screw type) pole pieces - maybe an experiment or custom order?

Cont'd - OK, just took a look at the book - there were oval pickups with adjustable pole pieces on the 1940-ish lap steels. I guess I still have plenty to learn!

Carl Leyland wrote:I'm no expert but I saw in the Gibson steel guitar book....

Thanks Carl; I found & ordered this book
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... 21/fj45com
for $22.88 + $3.99 S/H from Amazon.

carl,
You're right. But they were a step towards the P-90s.