Something Slide-ly different

[Hans Bezemer]

I doubted to put this post in Jam session but since it involves strings I finally decided to put it here.

A while ago I made a semi acoustic lapsteel guitar out of scrap pieces of birch plywood, just for the fun of it.
The instrument is basically a box with two set of strings mounted on top of it, using acoustic guitar pins to hold the ballends and zither pins to tune the strings.
Bridge and nut are made of brass bar.
I've mounted a piezo pickup under the bridge and made a Till preamp to buffer the piezo.
The preamp is powered by either phantom power of a mixer or through a selfmade stompbox-like powersupply.

The sets of strings are tuned C6 (10 strings) and open C (6 strings).

Although being far from perfect, I kind of like the sound of it.

I can play it on my lap or on a keyboard stand.

Here it is in action (please note that I haven't played slide guitar before... )

Hans

[Bob Francis]

I like the sound and idea a lot.

[Gordon Bellerose]

I like the sound!
And for a guy who says he hasn't played slide before, you're doing pretty good.

[Jason Rodgers]

More fun stuff from the Netherlands! Sounds like a slide guitar to me. Did you do any calculating on the box volume and the port areas?

[Hans Bezemer]

Did you do any calculating on the box volume and the port areas?

As a science teacher I'm a bit embarrassed to say that I didn't....

The construction is way to heavy to be a good soundbox. The sides are 3/4" ply and top and back are 1/4" ply. You can let an elephant play this thing without doing it any harm. The acoustic sound has a low bass response.
But as said, I made it from what I had available.
As for the dimensions, the box is 4x12x36" (10x30x90 cm). I wanted a baritone scale (30") for the Open C and low C tuning. I used a regular baritone string set for the 6 strings and mixed a regular baritone and guitar string set for the 10 string C6 tuning.
If I would build another one (which is of course only hypothetical, as my wife can read this post), I would use these dimensions as a starting point, it feels and plays comfortable.

I found a couple of things cool about this instrument, (some of which I would love to develop more):
- Simplicity of the concept: building time was just 8 to 10 hrs, with a lighter construction it would yield a great and loud sounding acoustic instrument
- Because of the height of the instrument it plays comfortably when I let it rest on my lap (compared to an electric lapsteel)
- The two set of strings act as sympathetic strings when tuned right. Now I only use one of the two outputs, but when both outputs are connected you get a little reverb-like sound.

I was surprised to see that tuning the instrument using zither pins was very doable after I got the hang of it. As far as I can see, the strings don't need more retuning then with machine tuners.

Hans