Kekuku was inducted into the Steel Guitar Hall of Fame in 1993 as the inventor of the Hawaiian steel guitar.
Playing a lap steel guitar can be quite fun, and building one for yourself can be an enjoyable, rewarding experience. Lap Steel Guitar Lessons: What Exactly Is a Lap Steel Guitar, Anyway The lap steel guitar is a wonderful accident of history The legend is that Honolulu high schooler Joseph Kekuku was messing around with an old guitar and a rusty bolt and liked the sound of the bolt on the strings. 4000 turns read 2.4k ohms, 5100 read 3.0k ohms.Ĭost so far: $0, unless you count what I paid for the magnet wire 35 yrs ago I don't remember, but I haven't missed that money in the meantime pretty sure the cost of copper has gone up a bunch since Ford was president The lap steel guitar is a popular instrument found in folk, country, bluegrass and even Hawaiian music. Sorry I didn't take pics of them after the cleanup.Īfter the cleanup, I made a pair of bobbins out of scrap mahogany I had lying around, smoothed them out, mounted the magnets, and after many false starts, wound them on my son's old F-P record player winding by time & RPMs of the turntable, calculated 4,000 turns, then did a coil tap & wound 1,100 more. They were scanned from the original and sent in eight different parts. Although those multi-neck creatures are a ball to play, we’ll keep things straightforward in this lesson and focus exclusively on the most basic of all.
LAP STEEL GUITAR PLANS PDF FULL
The plans feature a lap steel guitar with full schematics. Non-pedal steel guitars have either six or eight strings that are played in a mind-boggling number of tunings, and some lap steels even have two or three necks to accommodate multiple tunings. or 8 string lap steel guitar construction as well as other items that would be of use to amateur builders. Hope some of you interested in building will take the plunge with a little encouragement.
LAP STEEL GUITAR PLANS PDF PDF
After sitting in a parts drawer for 35 yrs, they were pretty rusty, but still were magnetized. We recently received these plans from 'Hubcap John' Hayward which were originally featured in Practical Wireless Magazine in London in 1965. The plans are in PDF format and available as one sheet or 4 sections that can be printed and tiled together for a 12-3/4' by 17' scale print. Anyone Can Play C6 Lap Steel Guitar by Mel Bay - This is a DVD course full of lessons for the beginner. Towards that end, back in the mid 70s I bought a 1/4 lb of enamel wire, thinnest I could find was 40 gauge also acquired some magnet pole pieces from somewhere that I can't for the life of me recall now. The Hal Leonard Lap Steel Guitar Method by Hal Leonard - This paperback book is a great tool for beginner players and comes with a CD loaded with 95 tracks to play along with. Started off by winding my own pickup - something I've wanted to try for nearly 4 decades now. Question 2, so far so good - will know more when the strings arrive. Just like it says, this was more an experiment than a project can I build a lap steel for nearly $0? And make it sound like anything?Īnswer to 1st question: Yes.