The Steel Guitar Forum

Hi everyone ! I was asking myself on how to play the lap steel when on vacation where I would have no electricity. Does 8 string acoustic lap steels exist or do I have to stick with 6 strings like dobros (I play a fender champ copy (guyatone ) ? If you have any suggestion on such a musical device that would really be nice to share it with me . Thank you, please stay safe and have a great day.

There are 8-string resonators - cheapest I know of is Gold Tone Paul Beard Signature - about $1200 from Beard. I'm not aware of any production 8-string Weissenborns.

I think the simpler solution would be a battery powered mini-amp for your lapper - the total package size would be much smaller. I carried a Cube battery/12 V amp with me when I was captain of a large day tour boat so I could practice during my mid-day break. This was my rig at the time:




I used the 12V adapter for the amp, but batteries work too.

You can get even smaller amps than the Cube, or just a headphone amp as well if size is an issue.

The 8 string resos are unlikely to be cheap, but they do exist. I would think a lot of the playing styles that electric 8 stringers play might not adapt to well to the reso...ie., the big deep bass sound of Jules C13 or B11, probably not going to have that deepness on an 8 string acoustic...

I bought a Blackstar Fly for travel use, it was OK, but eventually have replaced it with the slightly bigger, but still battery-powerable Yamaha THR10. Sounds great with my lap steels.

If you really want pure acoustic, my preference would probably be just a 6 string, still. Plenty you can do with one of em, and a lot more choices/options with 6 string.

I would concur that a small battery-powered amp is the way to fly.
Of the four or five models I've tried, I favor this one for steel (either lap or pedal):

Roland Mobile Cube

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail ... guitar-amp

second thumb up on the Vox plug, just they're small and easy to lose

Brooks Montgomery wrote:

As an alternative, eliminate the middleman:

I have a set of VOX Amphones for bass. Not all that crazy about 'em, but they work as advertised.

And if you're playing just to practice, not to be heard...well, maybe I'm alone in this but I practice acoustically a lot. Not as pleasing to the ear...and my Clinesmith frypan is fairly quiet, acoustically...but still serviceable for practice. More often than not at home I don't bother plugging in.

I almost never plug in at home unless rehearsing with someone else or recording.

The only time is if I'm learning something and need to play a track while my wife is watching TV, when I will use one of those little plug in headphone amps which let's me connect my MP3 player to it as well.

The Paul Beard Signature (PBS-Eight) is very loud! Tons of bass, too. I bought one here, about a two months ago, for $999, but the price just went up to $1099...
Some stores try and bone you extra for the case and shipping, but this place includes both, free. They come strung up EGBDEGBD.

https://www.instrumentalley.com/Gold-To ... /pbs-8.htm

Thanks friends for all your comments. I already have a small vox amp where I put a lead battery so that's not really the way I want to go. I thank you for pointing me to the PBS gold tone resonator. I might also consider a 6 string maybe ... that could be cheaper and have more options available.
I will not use headphones I prefer to hear the music with ears uncovered (gets me too warm !). And I will add that I also practice a lot unplugged, I did that with guitar too, almost all the time but with jazz boxes so that is still a little acoustic eventually.
Have a great day.

Jack Hanson wrote:I would concur that a small battery-powered amp is the way to fly.
Of the four or five models I've tried, I favor this one for steel (either lap or pedal):

Roland Mobile Cube

Bobby Ingano uses one for his day-to-day gigging amp. Of course he'd get fantastic tone out of two tin cans and a piece of string.

Hi everyone I am still thinking this through. Do you think I could have an A6 tuning over a Dobro ? I don't easily find information on that with the search criterias on the forum.
Is that possible ? For me that would be best as I am totally in that tuning, even with 6 strings, I could still play the heads and more.
Thanks and have a nice day.

For a while at work we were taking hour long lunch breaks , Id go sit in my truck and use one of those plug in tiny VOX Amp plugins to my Lapsteel , ran an auxiliary chord from it to my truck radio and it worked great , especially for just practicing . I was using a cheaper rogue model so as my fender wouldn't get stolen while I was working the rest of the day . It was a cool little setup

As far as A6 tuning on the Dobro , I have a 6 stringer and an 8 stringer tuned to open G and the latter open G6 . From what I've learned you might be able to get away with a slightly different tuning if you transfer the gauges around . Or G6 gets you that punch with the resonator , and you can just play A6 just with either putting a capo on the 2nd fret or shift yourself up two frets

Maxime Ledon wrote:Hi everyone I am still thinking this through. Do you think I could have an A6 tuning over a Dobro ? I don't easily find information on that with the search criterias on the forum.
Is that possible ? For me that would be best as I am totally in that tuning, even with 6 strings, I could still play the heads and more.
Thanks and have a nice day.

Yes, I tune my Dobro to A6. I bought individual string gauges using John Ely's chart (I chose the thinnest in each case)

https://www.hawaiiansteel.com/graphics/ ... _chart.pdf

Mine is a roundneck, designed for non-slide playing so I got a nut raiser for it. I use it on all my acoustic gigs.

I have a import square neck Flinthill dobro that was converted to 7 string. I tune it to A6 like others have mentioned. I believe it was converted by Beard’s shop by a previous owner. It looks like a relatively simple conversion.

For simple practice I once built a “cat can” type instrument. It was tinny spounding but very compact and loud enough to practice with. Mine was 6 strings but 8 would be simple to make as well.

Jeff, Joe ! Thanks there is light at the end of the tunnel