Steel Guitar Builder

The bridge on this steel is not grounded, this was my first and with used parts , this is a single coil pickup, but it has no more buzz than my fender telecaster, i have changed to a aluminum bridge on my other steels, and they all are grounded, no noise at all but i use hot humbuckers and Alumiton...

JW Adams wrote:

phptfar2gAM.jpg

JW - I'm working on a lap steel right now with a very similar bridge - how did you ground to the bridge on your build?

Thanks -
C

Eldon wrote:I considered the scale the most critical measurement and I basically just designed the guitar around this as I went.

I'd like to hear more about why you chose this scale length, and how that influenced the rest of your design.

Thanks -
C

Great work, Allan - I dig the asymmetrical design.

Between the alum nut & the P-90, that thing must be a screamer!

It looks like there is no nut on the plug that will come into contact with the foil tape. D'Oh! The nut! The plug is one I found in my pile of scraps - it was missing the nut. I hadn't thought twice about it, any more than how convenient it was that the plug fit snugly into the hole. Course, the nu...

...but since this is my first foray into wiring, I have a few questions. It's a Morrell "Little" Roy Wiggins body - came to me with the slotted headstock/drilled tuner holes/body cavity route. I made the bridge/nut/fingerboard, bought some tuners & electronics. I've foil taped the cavity: http://i83...

Good luck!!! :) Thanks! I was able to drill the holes reasonably in line, and the break angle is great. I'm still tempted to make a top-loading bridge while I'm at it, just to swap them out & know definitively (for this guitar) which is better. Really won't answer anything in the long run....why be...

Actually, if you want to amplify the 12 fret harmonic as strongly as possible the pickup would need to be at the position of the 24th fret or close to the 5th fret. When you generate a 12th fret harmonic the actual 12th fret point becomes the harmonic node and is the point of minimum excursion of t...

I had the same thought about a p/up at the twelfth fret after watching/listening to Kelly Joe Phelps for years. He produces some awesome sounds by picking the strings behind the bar, then sliding around. I don't listen to tons of steel guitar music (ironically) so I don't know if this is a real comm...

...until tonight, when I got ahold of a drill-press style apparatus.

I've now drilled my body for string-thru design.......wish me luck!