The Steel Guitar Forum

Do any of you have any experience using the lap steel fretboards being sold on Ebay? I'm thinking of building my own lap steel and would like your opinion if you have one.

Thanks,
MU

Are you referring to the ones from Vietnam?

I have a "plastic" fretboard on my lap steel and I broke it while doing some doo-wah. I was hitting the strings with the bar and it slipped and hit the fretboard instead.

I think it's better to have the fretboard directly on the neck of the guitar instead of something screwed over it.

Better : http://www.tremblayguitars.com/archive/ ... c009&img=1

Not that great : http://www.tremblayguitars.com/archive/ ... m004&img=1

Bill,
I guess those are the ones. I didn't know where they were made. But I guess I do now!

MU

Are these the ones you saw on ebay. He has quite a few designs. If they are and you are interested, I have 3 of them.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Lap-Steel-Guitar ... 27ca679fa6

You can make your own.

Go here:
http://www.ekips.org/tools/guitar/fretfind2d/

Enter your scale length (I use 23 inches, other common scales are 22.5 and 24 inches).

Set the string widths to be equal (unless you want some taper in your strings)

Set the number of strings to 0 to just print the fretlines.

Save to PDF.

Use this program:
http://www.anypdftools.com/pdf-to-word.html#153
and convert it to Word format.

In Word, you can draw over the fretlines and add your fret markers. (If the images don't want to go over the fretlines, right click the image and choose "Size and Position", click Text Wrapping and choose "In front of text".)

Now you can print this out on glossy paper and embed it under plexiglass, or you can print it out on waterslide decal paper and apply it directly to the guitar, or you can print laminate and double-stick tape to your guitar.

Little more work, but this lets you design your fretboard to your specs.