Wand 1 - My first lap steel build

Solid Body Steels, Reso, Weissenborn...
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Jif
Posts: 86
Joined: Thu Nov 08, 2012 12:54 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: Wand 1 - My first lap steel build

Post by Jif »

Thanks Jonsey, I'm kinda making it up as I go along but learning a lot as I go. :D

Still freezing up here in Jockland, even though it is supposed to be summer. :lol:

General Update

I'm hoping to pick this up again within the next few weeks, unfortunately life has got in the way these past few months but signs of a clear spot are now showing, so bar any further interruptions I'll get started again soon.

In the off-time I've been musing some things I want to try with this, such as hollowing out a sound chamber underneath the fretboard and putting piezo's in strategic positions which can be mixed in with the pups. I was looking into the dimensions used in acoustic guitars for sound chambers and have used the ratios involved to design the shape and size of the sound chamber for the steel.

I've semi-designed the electronics for the pre-amp section of the steel, the general intention is to be able to mix between the 2 pups & between pups and piezos, rather than using switching. Sort of like blend controls with an overall volume for the output. I'll need to put together a piezo pre-amp as part of this and may build in some parametric filters to remove as much of the quack as possible, or to select a narrow band of frequencies to use as a sound warmer. TBH My thoughts on this were to use the piezos as a sort of resonance source for the lower and mid frequencies. Long way to go before I reach this stage though!

I bought a couple of cheap dual grinders from Lidl, they're really good for the price, (around £20 each), the intention is to take the grinding wheels off one of the units and replace them with wooden pieces to wind pups. I'm building a foot speed control for this. The other grinder is used for grinding :roll:

Something else I've been thinking about is using different sizes of fret markers as they go up the neck, i.e. starting off with the first fret being quite thick and then reducing each subsequent fret marker by 0.1mm so that by the time you get to the top of the neck they are much thinner. I'm using Walnut strips for this and I've tried cutting them at various thicknesses and had no problem with it so should be OK, of course I'll need to cut the slots appropriately but I've bought a special filing tool which should allow me to do this.

So all I need to do now is get started again :D
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