All Things Lap Steel!

[dubkitty]

getting them properly adjusted is tricky. if you were sitting in the room with me i could show you in ten minutes, but i can't explain it with a wall of text. i use .016 metal fingerpicks and a National plastic thumbpick. the Nationals are the only thumbpicks i've tried that really work. most thumbpicks aren't heavy or stiff enough for steel applications. maybe you could find some guidance by Googling "fitting fingerpicks" or something like that. i suppose i could put mine on and take photos so you can see how i fitted them. would that help?

[Chankgeez]

I play with a thumbpick, but not fingerpicks.

Reason being is that I'm always playing lap style on electric, don't need 'em for volume and don't like the way they feel.

These are the picks I play with: https://pro-pik.com/products/propik-original-thumbpick

I've also been playing in GCEGCE.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Ah saw those when I was looking, seemed intriguing but just went for a set of dunlops to ease my toes in (.020", think the thumb is thicker). I love the finger picks, think I might try a plastic thumb pick because the metal one has no give so trying to play anything fast with it is quite jarring on my thumb. Maybe I'll get used to it.

[Heraclitus Akimbo]

Damn, I tried it numerous times but I just can't get along with these things. They feel just super weird and clumsy and I'm totally unable to control my fingers with them...

I acknowledge it's a function of me having no clue what I'm doing, but when I fiddled with finger/thumb picks for the lappie it never seemed like they were at the right angle. Which, again, implies I'm doing the "wrong" thing with my hand in the first place.

[dubkitty]

i recommend plastic thumbpicks. metal ones can be overly bright-sounding and are harder on the strings.

[qersty]

I'm pondering getting a steel guitar. Sucks that I never seem to find any bargain ones apart from the really cheap thomann branded ones. Grestch also has one that isn't prohibitively expensive. I have done some fiddling about in open tunings with lots of unison and octave strings like DDdfaa and Bbdfad, the problem with these tunings is that is really want to have more strings so I at least could expand to something like DDddffaa which makes price to accessibility even worse. I am at least not dumb enough to think up 10-string tunings (yet) and have given up on my pedal steel dreams as of now.

Actually, i haven't fully. I browsed a website of pedal steel tunings at work one day and found out that some people use diatonic tunings. This gave me the idea of using the pedal steel to play folk melodies with a lot of blue notes and neutral intervals on it. This would require skill though.

I have managed to get Kristof Hahn's email adress and I am about to bother him about technique and approach questions...

[Chankgeez]

(If you can,) Buy used! Definitely better value.

I almost grabbed this recently:



Thought it was a little too expensive for the condition though.

I once thought I wanted an eight-string until I got one. It was weird. Wasn't used to it. Went back to six-string.

You're gonna have fun no matter what.

[dubkitty]

OK, is that a Supro?

speaking of which, if i get the Supro Black Holiday to put Bigsby pickups in i'm going to have two of their Vistatone single-coils-in-humbucker-shells which i'm not that nuts about for guitar but would be fab for lap steel. i could put both of them in with a switch like the old Guyatones. or if i could find the right donor i could do a doubleneck with one for each neck.

i would like to try an 8-string steel, which i'd tune to open E with the top two strings at C# and F# like in E9 pedal steel tuning. i loved playing pedal steel, but when the shit hit the fan in the early 10s it was one of the few big-ticket items i could flog, so farewell, Emmons S-10. i'll probably never find an affordable pedal steel again...i got mine extremely used for like $800, and now $2000 is cheap. but i can fake some of my favorite pedal steel ideas on an 8-string.

[Chankgeez]

It's actually a "Guild". Pretty beaten up. '60s Japanese replacement pickup as well.

Here's the listing for that one:

https://reverb.com/item/87849437-used-v ... -lap-steel

Here's what it should look like:

https://reverb.com/item/65780459-guild- ... -1940s-red

Yeah, eight-string steels are great. They're just an adjustment.

[qersty]

(If you can,) Buy used! Definitely better value.

I know this for sure but I feel a little anxious about buying lap steels in the EU. Since it hasn't been as much a thing outside of hawaiian music as it is in the states people could be selling anything for an price. probably a lot of the more known ones are pricier imports.

Like this Supro that has that weird taxi-dispatch mic screw

https://reverb.com/en-se/item/87037641- ... -lap-steel

[dubkitty]

i would do the two added strings like a E9 pedal steei, above the normal six. that way i can do the double-stops up from G#/E to A/F# to B/G# with only moving the bar once.

[qersty]

Also that guy is selling a "silver label" (?) metal zone for what used to be japan HM2 prices. Where is the metal zone economy heading? #JHSd

[qersty]

i would do the two added strings like a E9 pedal steei, above the normal six. that way i can do the double-stops up from G#/E to A/F# to B/G# with only moving the bar once.

Is that the thing where they do the reentrant tuning or is that some other kind of E9? I dont really understand pedal steel tunings but I get some 10:ers are like 2 5-string tunings on top of each other?

[dubkitty]

i’ve been lusting after one of those MOTS lappies with the string-through pickup for ages. there’s one called the National Chicagoan which as one who hails from the Windy Bean i should really have.

[Chankgeez]

Yeah, I just looked and there are only 4 listings for lap steels in Sweden.

Best prospect (even though it has a replaced pickup):

https://reverb.com/item/88526946-harmon ... s-pearloid

Still, not cheap, but pretty cool. Make an offer?

I know Hawaiian music enjoyed at least some passing popularity in England: