Lap steel questions

Hecubus

Hecubus

New member
I am building a lap steel and had a couple of questions.

How does scale length affect tone? I am assuming it will be similar to a normal guitar with 22.5" giving the mellow Hawaiian sound and 25" giving a more country sound. Is this correct?

What kind of pickup (output wise) is best suited for a lap steel. I know an overwound single coil/ P-90/ and HB will all yield different tones, but should I be looking at hot pickups?

Is wood choice more important than pickup choice or vice/versa? I am looking at mahogany, ash, maple, and alder to pair with one of the above mentioned pups.

I know there are some of you who have built these before so any advice is appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Re: Lap steel questions

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Here's my lap steel. I had some 7-string pickups leftover from a project, and I happened to have 7 kluson style tuners as well. So I made it from Walnut and Purpleheart. I made it entirely out of scrap that I had around. I think the wood has less of an impact than it does on a "wearin' guitar" because there's so much mass from the neck to bridge. I used a 25" scale because I played slide on my lap before and I'm used to the "wearin' guitar" scale length. But also I couldn't have a low B on a short scale guitar anyway.

I used a real fretboard, and I fretted it instead of just filling the slots with binding or colored filler. Again, the only reason was because I had the frets lying around and I knew I'd never use that particular size.

I like hot pickups in a lap steel. They should be highly magnetic IMO, because you want to keep the strings farther away from the pickups. It's easy to press the string down with a lap steel, and you don't want it to hit the pickup top. So I used a large ceramic "distortion" style magnet in the bridge. I used an Alnico in the neck, and truthfully the best tone I had in a neck pickup on that guitar was one like the Duncan Stag Mag. I made it with regular 7-string bobbins but with real strat Alnico rod magnets, so it was like two single coils next to eachother. It's good to have hum cancelling if you can, because with the strings farther away from the pickups the signal to noise ratio is worse than a standard guitar. A P90 Stack would be cool, as would a Hot Strat Stack, but I like my humbuckers too. I have coil cuts on both of them.

So to recap-hot pickups IMO, and you can choose the wood for beauty over sound.
 
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Re: Lap steel questions

Thanks! I love the purple accents in the wood. Nice touch. Is the fretboard purely decorative or does the maple brighten up the tone? I was planning on painting the fretboard on or masking it off with tape and doing a natural wood relief.
 
Re: Lap steel questions

The board is aesthetic only. It could have been a computer printoff for that matter. I just used it because I knew the scale would be right, and I only fretted it because I'm used to seeing frets. Plus on a darker stage I wanted to see the arched fret tops reflecting light. I figured that would be easier to see than dark lines. The other reason for Maple? I simply like the look of it against the Walnut.

The Purpleheart strips are mostly there because I had the PH scraps, same reason the Walnut is there. The Walnut is in strips like a cutting board. It was also scrap. I had it left over from a table project years back. The laminated "cutting board" approach is best I think. I want the lap steel to have minimal wood tone. I'd rather have it very tight and smooth sounding. Its the opposite of a regular guitar philosophy.

The bridge is just fretwire arched over a solid block. It cost me nothing. It looks a little silly but it was free. So I have a fret on that end, and a wooden "nut" on the headstock end. I like the idea of the wooden nut on the headstock end because in my mind it mellows the "back string" sound when the slide is down, and smoothens the open notes.
 
Re: Lap steel questions

How deep did you have to route for the humbuckers? Some of the plans I've looked at have you screwing a single coil pup right onto the top of the guitar. I am assuming the route will be shallow since you want to elevate the pickup proportionate to the higher action.
 
Re: Lap steel questions

The center of the body is raised up, and the pickup routes weren't that deep. You can kind of see how the body goes down at the sides of the string, then at the bass side where the little "explorer" style protrusion is, it slopes up again and I can rest my slide in there.

Depending on the pickups I had in there I've used 1/4" of hard foam at times. Now it's down to just 1/8" of neoprene.
 
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