Looking forward to seeing your project when its done, its a lot of fun building them.
How many strings? What kind of tone are you looking for?
For 6 string pickups, P90 type pickups work great and are fairly plentiful in a lot of price points.
For 8 string, Lollar, Vintage Vibe, and Jerry Wallace all offer some well respected pickups.
You can use a lot of different materials for nuts .. aluminum, brass, Corian, bone.
I've been using mostly bone and like it a lot. Its easy to shape and work with and has a nice bright clear tone.
For six strings, I've used off the shelf Strat / Tele hard tail bridges with very good results. I've also made a few out of aluminum channel, angle, and round rod that sound great too.
Stainless steel or brass works too.
8 string bridges will need to be made, though Hipshot does make an 8 string hard tail and Trilogy.
For a plan, I think Bluestem has a full scale free plan they offer for download.
If you do a design of your own, it helps to draw it out full scale first.
Start with a centerline and go from there.
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Some misc pics of my hand crafted steels
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Lap Steel Guitar Tuning

In 2018, I was approached to do an interview with Andy Volk, author of ‘Lap Steel Guitar’ and numerous other steel guitar books Volk Media Books website for a guitar publication. We had a pleasant conversation and Andy went on to write this piece which, unfortunately, never made it to publication. We recently received these plans from “Hubcap John” Hayward which were originally featured in Practical Wireless Magazine in London in 1965. The plans feature a lap steel guitar with full schematics. They were scanned from the original and sent in eight different parts. We did our best to match them up into one complete PDF. Lap Steel Guitar Fretboard. In this, my first Instructable, I will attempt to chronicle the construction of a simple Lap Steel guitar. Disclaimer; power tools and sharp cutting tools will be used and I take no responsibility for people who use these things carelessly, read and understand manufacture's instructions and safety guidelines for their proper and safe use. The Danelectro lap steel plan is an unusual, Art Deco style instrument. This project was built to test the plan. American tulipwood with a cellulose finish and lipstick pickup-sounds really sweet! Scale length 23' and 36 frets (markers only) Build sequence video on youtube, click on the link. Can be trimmed to fit the width of a 6 or 8 string lap steel or a 10 string lap or pedal steel guitar! I will make the.pdf download file available on this site. If you are looking for a downloadable fret board this would be a great deal for you!

Building Lap Steel Guitar Pdf Pic To Print

Lap Steel Guitar Plans

Build yourself a really cool lap steel guitar with these detailed, professionally drawn plans. Plans show complete details drawn full scale (1:1). Complete materials list and sources, wiring details for volume and tone controls, fretboard dimensions and much more. The Photos below show a lap steel guitar built from these exact plans.
Construction Photos of guitar built from these plans. You can build this guitar from a variety of woods. The example below is white maple. A 3/4' thick planed board, 72' long x 8' was used. The board was cut in half to get two 36'x8'x3/4' pieces. These pieces where glued together to get an 1 1/2' body block. The outline of the guitar was printed on 8 1/2'x11' paper and taped together. The paper template was traced on the body blank and cut out with a band saw. (You could use a jig saw instead). The headstock/peghead with 'thinned' and angle to 3 degrees and 1/2'thick on the band saw. (You could use other saws, planes and chisels to get the peghead shape). The cavities for the electronics and picukp where cut with a forstner bit and a dremel tool.
This lap steel guitar features a solid white maple body, rosewood fretboard with low steel frets, custom made polymer clay position markers. Brazilian rosewood peghead veneer and trim plates. Standard lap steel 22 1/2' scale with 2' ebony nut.Kent Armstrong #MP-112K single coil pickup. Telecaster style, fully adjustable bridge. 500k volume and tone pots and standard 1/4' input jack. Grover 18:1 'Sta-tite' tuners. Set up with Morell JMLS-G strings (016, .018, .026N, .040N, .050N, .058N). Excellent tone!
Plans are provided in a PDF document that is drawn 1:1 scale for printing on 24'x36' media. To get a full-size print of the construction plan you will need to take the PDF to a Quick Print business who can print documents on an ink jet printer that can take 24'x36' media. However, you can also print 'sections' of the plan on a smaller printer and tape together for cutting templates as needed. Moped manuals online, free.

Building Lap Steel Guitar Pdf Picture

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