The Steel Guitar Forum

Me and a friend have been thinking about building a lap steel each, helping eachother out along the way..
We´re both amateurs when it comes to woodworking, electronics and such but we are gonna try it anyway..

Feel free to comment on our ideas, since Im sure you guys know a whole lot more than we do..

We found a place that sells HOnduras mahogany, so we might be using that.. Also, for pickups Ive been thinking about a pair of P-90´s. Bridge, I dont know what to get, but I would like to install palm pedals(?) on the G and B strings..

But a thing Ive been wondering about is tonechambers. what does it do to the sound? I mean solid wood vs. a body with tonechambers...

What do you think about our project? Is it gonna work if we put the work in it, it needs?

Feel free to comment and advise us here....
Thank y´all in advance...

David

Search through the site for posts about string spacing, read up as much as you can about that. This is most often overlooked by people making lap steels that never played one or havent played much.
6 string Lap steels usually have a wider string spacing than guitars partially because it is easier to slant the bar in tune and its more comfortable for finger picking (at least to me). Both points are arguable though!
Many Gibson lap steels used pickups similar to P-90's with wider pole spacing.
Guitar spacing will work but its almost a revelation when you play a wider spaced instrument.

There's a whole lot of online research you can do just to give you more ideas. This is the Asher Guitars site--they do use chambers.
http://www.guitartraditions.com/benh.html

Here's some stuff--
http://www.iwaynet.net/~steelgtr/build.html

There's a great fret calculator on that page too that you can download.

The choices are yours but you should give some thought to going 8-string. It is a significant upgrade for musical versatility (although obviously a whole lot of major music has been committed on a 6-string).

And Jason, above, would be an excellent source for a pickup.

I used a old style tele bridge plate and cover on my steel. The cover makes a great handguard and looks cool. Plus it allows for through-body stringing. It doesn stick you with a Tele-style rear p/u but there's ap retty good selectiuon of those and you can use anything you want in the 'neck' postition http://MaricopaGuitarCo.com/misc_guitars.html