10 string lap steel project

[Steve W]

I wanted a travel guitar as close as possible to my normal guitars so I started building one. I bought the keyhead as a rough cast. The maple is figured hard rock. I mde the bridge from a piece of aluminum but the bridge itself will have a 1/8 rod added once everything is bolted together and I have both brass and steel for that. Scale is 24.5. Tuners are grover knock offs made by Wilkinson. I have only drilled out for one so far. I'm making the pickup in the same way that I did my Miller T-10. It's a charlie Christian type bobbin and magnet set up with Bigsbyish windings. The fretboard is a Miller but I had it scanned and new ones in metal should be here later. The neck is channeled. The Miller is like that and I think it adds to the tone and if nothing else increases the accoustic volume which is cool when you just want to pick it up to practice.

Pickup is mounted from under the neck so that I can hide adjustment screws and keep the opening as close as possible to the size of the bobbin. All of the parts are just sitting on the guitar in the pictures and nothing has been polished or finished yet.

It's still in rough shape, the pickup needs winding, and I need to do the finish. I put a test of shellac on the underside which is showing up in the pictures. I'll finish with Varnish.

[Steve W]

Here's the under side with a bit of shellac to see how the figure will turn out.

[azureskys]

looking good so far

[Steve W]

Almost done with this. I forgot to ground the bridge so I have to open it up. I've mounted the pickup from under the neck and it needs some adjustment and the only way to do that is to pull the neck. Kind of dumb design but the pickup is in direct contact with the neck and bridge that way and it allowed me to make the pickup opening very close to the pickup body for looks.

This has a channeled neck which I did to increase the acoustic properties as a practice guitar and I like the way this works on my Miller. It seems to make the whole guitar vibrate more and I think that adds to the tone.

I haven't had a chace to compare how it sounds to my other guitars but I think it turned out well.

Things I learned on this one:

Don't leave you high speed polishing tool in one place too long. It heats up the finish and lifts it off the guitar.........yes that sucked but I'm to lazy to go back and fix that spot right now.

Clamp your work to the drill press so that it doesn't move when you don't want it too. I have another spot to fix where the piece moved and the drill bit hit the top of the neck.

Shellac can dry quickly and can leave streaks. Thin it or spray it.

I'll post some other pictures later.

[Allan]

Very nice, gonna post a sound bite some time?

[azureskys]

guitar looks good , what kind of pickup is that? Russ

[azureskys]

i missed that part where your building the pickup , so sorry Russ

[Steve W]

"Very nice, gonna post a sound bite some time?"

Can you give me a quick lesson or a link on how to post an audio track? If not, I'll try to find some time to do some research. I'm a bit limited on time since I have to go into the real studio next weekend for a new western swing project and I need to get my parts together.

I have an M-box and everything to record with at home, I'm just not sure how to get a track here.

Steve

[Bent]

Steve, the easiest way is to post your clip on Youtube. Or, if you want to post just the sound clip, do it here:
http://picosong.com/