The Steel Guitar Forum

Has there been any Banjo lap steels? I was playing a buddy of mine's banjo the other day, and I started thinking about Picking one up, putting and changing the string height to be played more like a lap steel(all I know how to play in my finite days of playing). I got influenced as hell when playing a slide on it very lightly, picking the same way as a lap, and made some great sounds.

Has anyone combined the two? If it's just raised is it more a dobro then?... with a pickup would it make it a lap steel? I really love that resonant tone... it just sounds amazing.

Having seen this I am going to have a hard time stopping myself from putting an extended nut on my banjo.....oh who am I kidding, I'll post results here if it isn't a total disaster.

I played upright bass in an acoustic band a few years back. We had a banjo player that would occasionally play slide banjo. I didn't really care for it but the audiences seemed to like it.

I've played a little bit of slide banjo. Without sustain (and slide banjo rings less than fretted), it's an interesting, but gimmicky sound. But with effects (like phaser or chorus), it can give an interesting texture to a song.

I tried slide banjo with a bottleneck, it was kind of fun but Yeah, to get more sustain you can soften the head to about 86, thicker/heavier bridge and some other tricks i can't remember.

Just play your dobro with a bar made from a 1" round wood dowel and get the same sound for a lot less effort...I throw that into the set when it calls for banjo...I even rounded the end to make a perfect bullet bar for faux-banjo slants...

Ryan Lunenfeld wrote:Has there been any Banjo lap steels?

Sure, they're called fry-pans.

who was it who said, like a pet monkey, a banjo seems a good idea at first?