The Steel Guitar Forum

Any suggestions.

I also would like to know why a slide electric (think Ry Cooder) has its sound. Not necessarily a Strat sound but a biting different sound. Does it have something to do with the strings being closer to the frets or using a slide on the finger rather than a heavier steel bar.

If Sonny Landreth played his G tuning on a lap steel rather than an electric guitar it would sound different.

Thanks

For starters, Cooder's Strat doesn't sound like a Strat because.....he doesn't have Strat pups in it. He has a lap steel Valco pup in the bridge and a Teisco pup in the neck, which is an outstanding clear pup for slide work.

As to Landreth...or anybody else for that matter....if you use the same pups in a steel that they use in a git, then the sound will be roughly similar all other things being relatively equal (same wood as git, same amp, same slide/bar material, same tuning).

Oh yeah, as to your question....for your steel to sound like your Strat....start with Strat pups.

Yes, it's in the pickups and how they are wired. It starts with a single coil pickup... no humbuckers allowed.
IMO a Fender Stringmaster is pretty close to a Strat sound. The pickup blend control allows for some interesting tones, mostly thin tones, almost an out of phase tone. Not quite like the "quack-quack" of a Strat, but close.

The tone of an instrument is the sum of its parts and construction. If a Strat like tone is the goal, certainly Strat style pickups is an important part of the equation, but also consider bridge material, woods, and scale length.

see pics of the custom Steelocaster built for me by Bob Littleton of West Coast. I use it often, love the five tonal colours. I have recorded and produced three CDs with "That Sound", all available on cdbaby.

All of the above is true but don't overlook the factors that exist with a slide guitar. The low (standard) action, played by a lightweight bar that skates relatively lightly over the strings so as to not fret out has a very different damping effect on the overtones. Standard bar technique on a lap steel tends toward a timbre fatter in fundamental tone. In my opinion this is a large factor in the differences between steel guitar and slide guitar.
But I am not minimizing the specific pickup differences plus the complex factors of multiple pickup arrays.

Stephen is right about the importance of the pick-ups. Forgot to say that the 8 pole pick ups were custom too: they were wound speciifically and mounted so the distance between poles and strings, as well as all the wiring, was exactly as in a Stratocaster. The strings sit above the fretboard as high as they would on a Stringmaster.

I wanted the Strat sound for a lap steel with absolutely no compromises, which is why I also retained the Strat shape. Bob Littleton did a great job.

Kay

Another Strat fan!!! What do you call your guitar?

Kay

thanks everyone!!!!

Here is my Rose wood/African Blackwood lap steel with a Epiphone Les Paul pickup.
The new fretboard with warthog tusk inlays will go into it soon.

I play the Chuck Lettes tuning and it works well in a folk band.
The switch changes the pickup from in fase to out fase sounds.
It is not the same as a Strat sound but closely so.

Interesting thread.


Let the games begin!

Jan, I don't know how you can get a Stratocaster sound out of a single P90 pickup. Do you have any recorded examples of this guitar?

David Cook wrote:Any suggestions.

I also would like to know why a slide electric (think Ry Cooder) has its sound. Not necessarily a Strat sound but a biting different sound. Does it have something to do with the strings being closer to the frets or using a slide on the finger rather than a heavier steel bar.

If Sonny Landreth played his G tuning on a lap steel rather than an electric guitar it would sound different.

Thanks

Both Cooder and Landreth have distinctive and quite recognizable individual tone that is very much a result of their playing technique, less a matter of which guitar they happen to be playing. Also their choice of amplification (Landreth in particular) is well outside the range of what's conventionally associated with lapsteel.

Higher gain amplification, lose the fingerpicks would be where I'd start for electric slide guitar v. lapsteel sound. Choose a lapsteel where you have access to the bridge for palm muting when desired.

Kay,
That guitar was built using a "Redneck" by Loni Specter.
After the picture was taken I did some further modifications on the guitar. I put a Trilogy tuner,
a roller nut and a different pick guard on it.

[quote="James Hartman....Both Cooder and Landreth have distinctive and quite recognizable individual tone that is very much a result of their playing technique, less a matter of which guitar they happen to be playing. Also their choice of amplification (Landreth in particular) is well outside the range of what's conventionally associated with lapsteel.

Higher gain amplification, lose the fingerpicks would be where I'd start for electric slide guitar v. lapsteel sound. Choose a lapsteel where you have access to the bridge for palm muting when desired.[/quote]

No argument about their distinctive technique.

I can't get YouTube in the office.....but if you go on YouTube and gets vids of Cooder playing the same song (Crazy 'Bout an Automobile) but years apart....you will hear a significant difference in his tone. Get a vid from the early late 70's/early 80's when Cooder plays a Strat w/Strat pups and compare that to the vid of Cooder/Lindley doing the above song from 1990 and Cooder is playing his Coodercaster with the leopard/jaguar spots on the headstock Strat.

It's night and day...the difference in his sound.

Stephen Abruzzo wrote:[

No argument about their distinctive technique.

I can't get YouTube in the office.....but if you go on YouTube and gets vids of Cooder playing the same song (Crazy 'Bout an Automobile) but years apart....you will hear a significant difference in his tone. Get a vid from the early late 70's/early 80's when Cooder plays a Strat w/Strat pups and compare that to the vid of Cooder/Lindley doing the above song from 1990 and Cooder is playing his Coodercaster with the leopard/jaguar spots on the headstock Strat.

It's night and day...the difference in his sound.

Sure, different pickups yield different tone. And both artists cited (as is true of most of us) have allowed their signature tone to evolve over the years. I was trying to respond to the electric slide guitar v. lapsteel question in the original post, rather than the Strat-tone question in the subject heading.

Thanks Brad, it's a humbucker played with the coils in series. My bad Anglo Saxon.

I'll try to make a sound.

Yes James, check Ry out in this video on acoustic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REBIm8jMrSA

Jan Viljoen wrote:Thanks Brad, it's a humbucker played with the coils in series. My bad Anglo Saxon.

I'll try to make a sound.

Yes James, check Ry out in this video on acoustic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REBIm8jMrSA

That vid is a wonderful Ry Cooder retrospective. Thanks for the link!

Here is one that I put together a few years ago. I found this body and neck sticking out of a trash can 20 years ago. The pickguard and it's components were missing but the Jag/JMaster style trem unit worked very nicely. I had a Fender neck on it for a long time and it was a very cool surf guitar. A few years back I decided to set it up as a lap steel with the original neck remounted. I put together a straight bridge and made a tall nut for it. The strap buttons are positioned so that you can stand to play. It is an awsome sounding guitar for blues and rockabilly style steel. When I first found it I thought it was an Italian made EKO but after many internet searches I finally came to the conclusion it was an EKO copy made by Tiesco in Japan. I used to play it as a lap steel with the band Magnolia Mountain on a couple of songs but rarely get it out anymore and when I do it's just for fun here at home.

warthog tusk inlays?

Boy, I'll bet there's a bunch of warthogs hoping YOU never become a big star.... imagine if Hendrix had had 'em!

I spent a long time working towards finding/faking a Duane Allman tone out of an S10 pedal steel, and besides all the obvious choices regarding which parts of the tone spectrum you sample, WEIGHT is key. Strings and AMPS interact differently with an 8 lb. wood thing than they do with a 30 lb. wood/aluminum thing. Allman and Cooder particularly seemed to have a balance to everything, where the wood, the amp and the strings are all interacting. Lindley, Johnny Winter, and Landreth are best known for tones where the amp overdrive is more predominant.

I have eventually reached the point where I want to make the best tone I can out of a given instrument, not the "most like..." tone. So, imitating Duane Allman has led me from a glass slide on a SG through a 50-watt no-master Marshall with PA speakers, to a brass slide on a maple bolt-neck instrument... go figure.

Rockne Riddlebarger wrote:Here is one that I put together a few years ago. I found this body and neck sticking out of a trash can 20 years ago. The pickguard and it's components were missing but the Jag/JMaster style trem unit worked very nicely. I had a Fender neck on it for a long time and it was a very cool surf guitar. A few years back I decided to set it up as a lap steel with the original neck remounted. I put together a straight bridge and made a tall nut for it. The strap buttons are positioned so that you can stand to play. It is an awsome sounding guitar for blues and rockabilly style steel. When I first found it I thought it was an Italian made EKO but after many internet searches I finally came to the conclusion it was an EKO copy made by Tiesco in Japan. I used to play it as a lap steel with the band Magnolia Mountain on a couple of songs but rarely get it out anymore and when I do it's just for fun here at home.

Great looking guitar! Looks like a shark took a bite out of it. Love it!

To get a Stratocaster sound from a lap steel, just use a Stratocaster with a nut riser.

Two things did not work for me when I tried to do that some years ago. According to my notes:

- the spacing of strings below fret 5 was far too narrow to do any single string steel bar hammering. I found slants difficult.

- the top string sounded tinney on most positions of the 5 way pup selector switch after about fret 12, even with a thicker string guage, I think I went upto 0.014. The bottom four strings were, however, more acceptable in tone, the second string marginal.

- the whammy bar did not need to be there, but then I could have unscrewed it...

David,

I just want to give some info around this critter.
Warthogs are not an endangered specie and since game farming started in 1962 on an organized level in South Africa, we have more game in South Africa than ever before, with a turnover of R9 billion.
The hunting season is on now till the end of July.
In some areas north to the Limpopo river they are considered a pest, cause they destroy crops and dig out water pipes.

I worked at the Land and Agriculture bank 20 years ago and many farmers just gave them away.
With the demise of elephants all sniffer dogs at airports and passport control centra are taught the difference between ivory, bone and hog tusks.

The hog tusks also make good guitar nuts, etc.
I saw on the internet that even extinct mammoth tusks are being sold in the USA and internationally.

I also see that Stew Mac does not export Paua shell anymore.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warthog

This is my Strat with a Loni Spector neck.