Making a lap steel guitar

Chalky

I'm thinking of buying a mahogany plank off ebay, say 30 inches by 5-6 inches, and making a lap steel guitar with a tele bridge, bone nut, and splittable humbucker. Anyone done this and got any hints or tips about best scale length, best pickup, or the best size or thickness of wood to use? Anyone got any suitable planks? Thank you in advance!

WezV

I have done a few.  

A tele bridge is a good choice... easy to adjust for zero radius.

i prefer a longer scale length.  24” works great.

minimum thickness would be about 1 1/2” .  I prefer about 2” for the central core, normally with thinner wings.

WezV

For Pickups, can’t go wrong with a high powered tele pickup, similar to the early broadcasters and fender lapsteels.  

Chalky

WezV said:

For Pickups, can’t go wrong with a high powered tele pickup, similar to the early broadcasters and fender lapsteels.  

Thanks @WezV ;- I figured the tele bridge would give me the brightness. Is there no point in adding a second pickup, neck equivalent?  I'm not short of pickups so I was wondering whether to put one in?

Also, there is lots of mahogany on ebay, what is the best value, and is it worth paying more for a piece that says its Brazilian, for example?  Or is there another wood that you might recommend?

ToneControl

make sure you leave an extremely high action, like 1cm+
Expect very high tension (15 gauge set), so use lots of wood, like @WezV says
Because it's a very high nut, it will put a lot of tension in a strange way, I am not sure if anyone else uses bone. Why not use metal?
 
Personally, I find you need quite a crisp pickup, so if using a HB, use a low output one

I'd like to hear a 30 inch one, but 21 or 24 inch is most common

Don't make the mistake of using standard string spacing

WezV

Honestly, on a lapsteel the tone mainly comes from the massive strings, powerful pickup and a good heavy tone bar.  

You don’t need high quality wood or perfect grain.  A bit of sapelli, utile or meranti should do the trick if you want a mahogany type wood

WezV

Although on pickup strength, I had Catswhisker rewind a couple of Japanese gold foil types.  He did them with the same wind but different wire... they were about 4-5k and sounded amazing.  That was the only one I have had with 2 Pickups 

Chalky

ToneControl said:

make sure you leave an extremely high action, like 1cm+
Expect very high tension (15 gauge set), so use lots of wood, like @WezV says
Because it's a very high nut, it will put a lot of tension in a strange way, I am not sure if anyone else uses bone. Why not use metal?
 
Personally, I find you need quite a crisp pickup, so if using a HB, use a low output one

I'd like to hear a 30 inch one, but 21 or 24 inch is most common

Don't make the mistake of using standard string spacing

Sorry, I meant 30 inch entire length of the plank, including headstock and wood behind the bridge and so a 24-25 inch scale.  What string spacing do you recommend?

WezV

Non tapered, or at least a lot less taper. Nut spacing can be as wide as bridge spacing

Chalky

WezV said:

Non tapered, or at least a lot less taper. Nut spacing can be as wide as bridge spacing

But still aligned with the pickup poles, I assume?

WezV

Yeah, but since the bridge spacing is the same it’s not really an issue

Nomad

Mine was made with the string spacing parallel, and set to pass over the centres of the pole pieces on a Tele bridge pickup set perpendicular to the strings. Bridge and nut were made from brass angle and set to give plenty of string height above the board (about 10mm).

The body was made from a bit of Meranti plank from a local timber place, probably 145mm wide and 45mm thick. It was a fairly low density piece compared to other bits of Meranti I've had from there.

ToneControl

these guys say 3/8 of an inch between strings
https://steelguitarforum.com/Forum2/HTML/007724.html

DulcetJones

I made this beauty back in the 80's out of a length of 2" x 6" fir.  The "bridge" and "nut" are just pieces or angle iron(or some kind of metal).  Originally I used a Tele neck pick up but found it to be lacking and went with a generic humbucker of unknown origin but works great.  The frets and markers  were made with a black sharpee marker!?  The scale length was modeled from measurements from my Les Paul, so it's long scale, whereas most production models are short scale.  I didn't know this until a few years after building this one.  Having played several short scale ones I have come to the conclusion that I like mine better.  It's especially useful now that I am learning to play dobro on it and have a set of specific strings for dobro, and in dobro's main tuning GBDGBD.     My entry in the upcoming riff of the month features this on lead(recorded and sent before I saw this post).     https://i.imgur.com/rLzWndN.jpg  ;

https://i.imgur.com/JVTQgEj.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/Zv4FTU8.jpg

paulnb57

I have pukka Mojo Lap Steel pickup I could be tempted to part with......same as this...team it up with a Tele half bridge.......

https://www.mojopickups.co.uk/product/mojo-lapsteel/

£100 UK mailed...

Chalky

Now I'm tempted to make two - one as I described and one with angle steel/brass bridge and nut!  

Everyone settled on 13-56 string guages?

WezV

Chalky said:

Everyone settled on 13-56 string guages?

As a minimum.... it’s not like you have to bend the buggers

PhilKing

I don't know Wez, what about this one - bit of bending (though with the palm pedal).

WezV

Good point well made

Nomad

Chalky said:

Now I'm tempted to make two - one as I described and one with angle steel/brass bridge and nut!  

Brass is easier to work than steel, and polishes up nicely.

Here's my bridge and nut...

Made from 1" brass angle, 1/8" thick. The bridge has slots at the end to retain the string ball-ends. String slots were added to the top edges. The little hole beyond the row of two countersunk holes in the bridge is for the earth wire - it's tapped so that a screw can be put in from underneath to trap the wire.

Nut fitted...

And the bridge...

Lots of screws in the bridge to ensure that it doesn't get pulled out.

Completed instrument...

The pickup is positioned away from the bridge to get a mellower sound.

ToneControl

Chalky said:

Now I'm tempted to make two - one as I described and one with angle steel/brass bridge and nut!  

Everyone settled on 13-56 string guages?

no, you want 15s for some scales

seriously, using a tonebar you have to press pretty hard, and 13s will deflect down towards the fretless board.
For the best lapsteel tone, you want no rattles, and that needs very tight strings, way tighter than normal
Also depends what scale you want to play with. C6 tuning is fun, and is not possible with a normal set of strings.
I'd guess you want open G or A (or the same tuning transposed up or down a tone to suit your scale length)

I've seen some lapsteel designs run into trouble using standard pickups and mounts because of the extremely high action required - it can be hard to get the pickups as near to the strings as normal