The Steel Guitar Forum

I recently became the parent of a lovely "wartime" (1941) New Yorker. It was a grandpa's attic rescue time capsule.

I know the earlier multi-pickup ones had pickup switching involved in the tone control. Has anyone diagrammed out the wartime string-through single-pickup version's tone circuit? For those who haven't played with one, the tone pot's characteristics are that in the center ("Chimes"), the tone is brightest (VERY bright in my case!), and the extremes ("Hawaiian" and "Harp") have the treble rolled off... but differently. Can anyone tell me what it's doing? I haven't actually opened it up to look yet...

By the way, the is in great shape and sounds terrific. The pickup is pretty hot and sustains forever. I don't think I have any magnet problems with this'un.

Hmmm... Guess not.

WRT the tone control, I'll bet there's two caps, one off each leg of the pot, to ground, with the wiper to the output. Most treble is found in the middle... choose your rolloff cap by going either way.

Take a look at this diagram:

http://www.hawaiiansteel.com/graphics/p ... ingle6.pdf

This may be what you are looking for!

Aloha,

John

That schematic is for an early '50s National Triplex. It has a conventional tone control, which operates differently from an early New Yorker's.

I have not take apart my 1940 New Yorker, but based on what I'm hearing I think Stephen is correct.

OK, then maybe this is it:

http://www.hawaiiansteel.com/graphics/p ... odel50.pdf

This diagram is from John Ely's webpage.

John

That's for a double-neck steel, probably a 1050 Grand Console. It shows a 3-way tone switch; the single-pickup New Yorkers have a potentiometer here instead.

Thanks guys. I opened the control plate and indeed did find two caps, one on each outside leg of the pot with the middle to ground. I can't get in any farther to find the values of the caps without removing the bridge plate. They are physically different sizes... Maybe they're .05 and .022 or something.

The wiper probably is to the output. I think Stephen's got it.

I need to re-wire a National CONSOLE model for a good friend. The wiring is all fouled up and I will have to start from scratch. This unit has the variable tone pot mentioned previously, labeled "Hawaiian - Chimes - Harp". There are no switches, just two pots per neck, two necks. Each neck has the magic tone pot and a volume pot. There were two caps, one a .03uf, the other a .08uf. Each of these caps connects to a separate end of the tone pot. It appears that the wiper of the tone pot was, indeed connected to ground. I CANNOT for the life of me, locate a schematic diagram for this lap steel. There was some thought that the pickup (which has eight tiny coils per neck, one for each of the 8 strings per neck), was possibly center-tapped to ground - but I can't confirm that and the pickups have been rewound..... I would really, really like to find an original schematic for this beast. If anyone has any information, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks,
Dave

David, Go down column on left to :
" ELECTRICS "
" New Yorker Lap Steels "
at the bottom of the page there's a schematic
hope it's pertains to your wartime model
http://notecannons.com/