After completing my 1st lapsteel guitar Lapsteel Guitar with string benders I got really into learning and playing it. Although I was very happy with it and the sound was great, there were several issues.
- It is REALLY heavy
- I don't have a gig bag to transport it. I was using a guitar gig-bag but it seems a bit daft
- While I am learning to play it, I cant decide what tuning i should use!
- The tuning pegs a difficult to use
So I decided to develop a new one. To solve some of the issues, some choices were made
- I will make this on the cheap with what I have lying around or is low cost. Plywood laminated construction and cheap components
- It will be hollow in order to reduce weight. This will also benefit the sound especially since it will be made of plywood.
- It will have two necks to allow for different tunings and experimentation.
- The tuning pegs will be top mounted to ease tuning
- It will have a lid so it can be closed up and transported without needing a gig-bag
- It will be treated as prototype platform that can be re-configured and changed
After deciding this, I came up with the following design
The body is a very simple rectangle as it also forms the case. It will be made by sandwiching pieces of 8mm ply together. This will hopefully make it light and strong and simple to make. The pickups and controls are mounted on plates and can be accessed from the back. This allows electrics to be changed without restringing.
The machinehead arrangement was made by machining angle aluminium. This was difficult to do accurately but worked out quite well. The design was inspired by fender champ lapsteels.
I initially wanted the 2nd neck to use a sustainer circuit. This proved difficult to prototype so I will return to it some other time.
The design worked so well, I decided to move the benders from my previous lapsteel to this one to play around with. I will by another set one day to replace it.
The integrated lid works very well and makes the whole unit very nice to move around.
It works quite well placed on a keyboard stand. It does mean that a pedalboard is difficult to place underneath. I am thinking of perhaps making folding legs that fold into the lid to make it even more integrated. I have two sets of old crutches that would be great for this!
The circuitry was difficult to finalise. The cavity is very small which limited the controls. I included a volume and tone for Neck A with a pickup selector toggle and just a volume for neck B. Only the neck pickup on neck B is working (The 2nd is a dummy). There is a toggle to select the neck. There is also a toggle to select the output which is either both necks are mixed through the same output or each neck goes through a different output which allows it to be processed seperately.