The Steel Guitar Forum

A short time ago I saw a Sonic lap steel advertised on E-Bay. I followed a lead to the Sonic website. The guitar appears to have a Tele style pickup and 6 individual bridge tuners.

Has anyone on the forum played this guitar?
How about a critique?

Roger

Roger, To answer your question regarding the Sonica lap steel, in my humble opinion it is about one step better than no lap steel at all. I bought one on EBAY, the final bid being $152.00. I was not impressed by the quality. It is made in China. It is made of some rather low density species of wood. It is rather light in weight and appears to have an automotive type finish that while looking quite pretty is so slick on the bottom side that it tends to slide right off your lap. They come equipped with some slinky guitar strings gauged from .009" to .042", making for a very mushy feel indeed. I trashed the .009 and moved the rest up one position and added a .048 at the sixth position. Tuned to E Major it really sounds pretty decent.

The combination tail piece and bridge is the standard Strat' knock-off type and serves the purpose quite well. The pickup and pots are the same as you would find on a Chinese Strat. but they work well and with the heavier strings the sound pretty decent.

Another nagging problem is the placement of the jack. Even with the 90 deg. plug on the included cord the plug is right in the way of the heel of the right hand interfering with your string blocking.

The design of the peghead is such that the strings tend to migrate toward the center of the peghead. This complicates string installation because you have to guide the strings carefully as you wind them on or they will migrate right off the end of the tuner shaft and into the recess in the center of the peghead.

The scale length is 24" and the fret marker placement is fairly accurate except the fret lines aren't exactly 90 deg. to the strings. On mine they appear to lean a couple or three deg. to the right.

The nut looks like a piece of inside corner molding, but it is a pretty decent piece of rosewood or something similar.

The retailer claims a list price of like $199.95 give or take a few cents(can't remember exactly) I would feel pretty good if I had bought it for around $75.00 to $90.00, but I wouldn't sink $152.00 into another one.

All the problems I mentioned can be corrected or at least improved with a little tinkering and attention to detail, but for $152.00 I could have scrounged some parts and built a pretty nice lap steel with better materials and components and would feel a lot better about it, I think.

Hope this helps with your decision.

Don