NGD Lap Steel

DulcetJones

I've been playing my home made lap steel long enough and went on the hunt for a "real" one.  I was just about to cave on a fairly pricey  one from Amazon when this showed up at a very reasonable price in my local area ads.  It's a 60's Guyatone in great shape and everything works.  

Winny_Pooh

That's cool. Those pickups should be great with slide. How much did you pay? 

DulcetJones

$350.00    Can, probably around 200 British Pounds?  The seller turned out to be another local musician that I've crossed paths with out there in the gigging world.

jpfamps

Cool.

What tuning(s) are you using?

I recently got an ABM 6 string off eBay which is a nice steel for not a lot of money.

DulcetJones

I'm using C6 (CEGACE) mostly because  of the ease of playing either a Major or Minor chord.    But I'm starting to dabble in other tunings.    I discovered that raising the A to G (CEGGCE) makes a full major chord and raising it to Bb (CEGBbCE) makes a bluesy C7.     I initially started out using dobro G tuning (GBDGBD) but the difficulty of playing anything but Major chords got to me.  C6 is a little tricky for playing solos though, the journey continues.

jpfamps

DulcetJones said:

I'm using C6 (CEGACE) mostly because  of the ease of playing either a Major or Minor chord.    But I'm starting to dabble in other tunings.    I discovered that raising the A to G (CEGGCE) makes a full major chord and raising it to Bb (CEGBbCE) makes a bluesy C7.     I initially started out using dobro G tuning (GBDGBD) but the difficulty of playing anything but Major chords got to me.  C6 is a little tricky for playing solos though, the journey continues.

Dobro tuning is great for country blues styles, and is probably more intuitive for guitar plays than 6th tunings, but getting your head around 6th tunings really opens up a ton of musical ideas.

It's interesting how you soon end up experimenting with tunings; the old adage is that there are many tunings as there are players.

I've got A6 and E13 on my double neck 8 string, and I've currently got A6 on my 6 string, although I have used C6 on a 6 string as well.

If you use that C6 with a high E then you can retune the steel to A6 without changing string gauges.

A popular variation on C6 is raising the bottom C to a C# (this is referred to as C6/A7). You lose the 6 string strummed 6 chords, but you now have a A7 chords on the bottom 4 strings (playing strings 6, 4 & 3 give a very nice 7th chord inversion) and a diminished triad, all using straight bar.

Chris Scruggs uses a C6/A7 on the front neck of his 8 string and there is some great footage on Youtube of him playing.

There are also some cool Youtube videos by Eddie Rivers using A6.

Joaquin Murphey's playing is worth checking out for single note lines.

The Cindy Cashdollar DVDs are good, although she uses C6 with a G on top.

These 6th tunings are great for Western Swing and older country styles, eg Hank Williams.

Once you get into that style, the 6th tunings make a lot of sense for solos (and backing) as you can harmonize lines in 3rds or 6ths. I think the key is listening to as much steel guitar as possible to familiarize yourself with it's sound.

I use a program called Transcribe to help me work out steel parts I like, and this has been really helpful.

If you want an tips let us know.

DulcetJones

Thanks for the info, I have watched some Cindy Cashdollar on youtube and found some of the exercises very useful.   I also belong to the steel guitar forum(a one time $5.00US fee gets you full access to lots of resources).  I've been using a volume pedal and adding atmospheric swells to some of the songs the other guitarist in my band wrote and just kind of finding my was as I go.  Steel guitar is so rare here in Canada that everytime we play live I get people asking me what that "thing" is.  I only use it on a handful of songs, dividing my time with acoustic six string guitar and a few songs with the banjo.

jpfamps

DulcetJones said:

Thanks for the info, I have watched some Cindy Cashdollar on youtube and found some of the exercises very useful.   I also belong to the steel guitar forum(a one time $5.00US fee gets you full access to lots of resources).  I've been using a volume pedal and adding atmospheric swells to some of the songs the other guitarist in my band wrote and just kind of finding my was as I go.  Steel guitar is so rare here in Canada that everytime we play live I get people asking me what that "thing" is.  I only use it on a handful of songs, dividing my time with acoustic six string guitar and a few songs with the banjo.

I get the same response when I play, as few people have seen one here too!

I use a volume pedal and reverb. 

I play in a couple of bands doing classic country and Western Swing, and I also play in a duo with a singer / acoustic guitar player playing more modern styles that the singer has written. I tend to use a lot of Memphis scale type ideas with volume swells.

Compared with virtually any other instrument there is a relative dearth of instructional material on the lap steel out there.

I'll look into steel forum.

DulcetJones

I just ordered the "Fretboard Roadmaps Lap Steel" book from Amazon, I'll let you know how it is when I get it.  I will pass on anything I think is useful.

Jimbro66

The book "Lap Steel Guitar" by Andy Volk is a must-have for lap/console steel players. It's a treasure trove of info.

jpfamps

I've got "Exploring C6th" by Andy Volk which has some very useful info in.

I'll look out for "Lap Steel Guitar".

To be honest I've found Trabscribe to be most useful as you can slow down and loop phrases, so you can get all the nuances which are hard to get from music / tab.

Jimbro66

jpfamps said:

To be honest I've found Trabscribe to be most useful as you can slow down and loop phrases, so you can get all the nuances which are hard to get from music / tab.

I don't know of that one. It sounds maybe like the Amazing Slow Downer software that I use for learning complex guitar parts. When I had to get up to speed quickly on steel for a new band some years ago I used ASD to learn Jeremy Wakefield's parts on Wayne Hancock albums which got me off to a decent start. It's a similar process of slowing and looping to what you describe.

BTW "Lap Steel Guitar" is not so much a tuitional book as an insight into the prominent players, their tunings, lap steel over the years, makes and models, etc, etc. A hard-to-put-down book

DulcetJones

I've used a few slow down types on programs in the past and have lately used Audacity to do that.  I also will transcribe examples from instruction books into Guitar Pro, it's a great way to see and hear what's going on and adjust the tempo to whatever you want.  I currently have GP6 which  allows you to create whatever tuning you want.

jpfamps

Jimbro66 said:

jpfamps said:

To be honest I've found Trabscribe to be most useful as you can slow down and loop phrases, so you can get all the nuances which are hard to get from music / tab.

I don't know of that one. It sounds maybe like the Amazing Slow Downer software that I use for learning complex guitar parts. When I had to get up to speed quickly on steel for a new band some years ago I used ASD to learn Jeremy Wakefield's parts on Wayne Hancock albums which got me off to a decent start. It's a similar process of slowing and looping to what you describe.

BTW "Lap Steel Guitar" is not so much a tuitional book as an insight into the prominent players, their tunings, lap steel over the years, makes and models, etc, etc. A hard-to-put-down book

Transcribe is a similar piece of software: a great tool.

By strange co-incidence I am working out the steel parts from Wayne Hancock albums at the moment too! Mainly Jeremy Wakefield, but also Herb Steiner.

They all seem to work fine in A6.