Acoustic Slide Guitars Although my guitars are currently priced at the cheaper end of the scale, the quality and tone are of the highest standard. The price will go up as they become better known. This forum compares a number of lap steels including mine Click on pictures to enlarge
More info and specs Fret scale length - 644mm or 683mm.....Nut width - 50mm (8str 60mm) Fingerboard markings Using large inlays as fingerboard markers is very different to using dots. The large wood inlays are good for seeing where you are with peripheral vision. (without looking directly at the fingerboard) If you were to include all the frets that are marked on a normal guitar (3, 5, 7, 9, etc) the markings become useless because they look the same. After a lot of experimenting, I have found that just using 5, 7, 12 and their octaves is by far the easiest way to find your position. I can do added markers for those who really want them, but I can promise you that after a couple of weeks of using my system, you would understand exactly why I have ended up using it as my standard. You really don't need a marker to show you 3 frets above or below the octave and you can always use stickers while getting used to it. Bridge and Pickup The spacing at the bridge is 58mm between outside strings, which is a good fingerpicking size. The pickups I use as my standard are a custom made K&K, which has classical width but is balanced for steel strings. I charge $140aud to supply and fit it. Despite the low price, I find these to be the best undersaddle pickup I have come across, having a true tone and needing no boosting as they have more output than a strat. I must point out that mixers and most amp inputs are not designed to take ultra high impedance piezo pickups. Most modern FX pedals, or signal processors can handle higher impedances, so using one between the guitar and the mixer is a good way to match the impedance. The word 'scale' refers to string length, not to instrument size. A longer scale guitar allows for a lower range of tunings. In slide guitars this is usually called a "baritone" but as there is no defined string length for such an instrument, the term is not that useful. My long scale is just one fret longer than my standard scale which makes it just under 27 inches. A good set of strings for slide is GHS Phosphor Bronze True Medium. (also available as cryogenic) The extra heavy top and bottom are good for DADF#AD tuning. This set of strings can also be tuned up a tone to EBEC#BE on my standard scale guitar without a problem. (Jeff Lang uses these strings in this tuning) For G bluegrass tuning GBDGBD, I would use this chart to work out the string gauges. I don't recommend the flat wound slide strings used on Dobros. My long scale guitar will handle the DADF#AD tuning but will also have plenty of power in CGCEGC tuning. That is the main practical difference between the two scale lengths. The guitars are optimized to a string tension of around 70 to 80kgs. (150lbs) They will handle more tension than that, but increasing the tension a lot more will cause damage. Although my guitars are stronger than others, you can still destroy them with excessive string tension. Here is an excellent string tension calculator and here is a chart for calculating string gauges. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||