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Alligator Lap Steel #1Private Reserve
Modeled on the Fender 8-string Stringmaster and Deluxe steels featuring 2 pickups with volume, tone, and blend for dialing in the perfect tone for any mix. The pickups are hand-wound with reverse polarity to create a humbucking effect when both are balanced. These are very sweet sounding instruments and great looking as well. Gotoh tuners for smooth and accurate tuning. Finished Spring, 2009. This is the first prototype. Carved from recovered oak floor joists milled over 150 years ago. Slightly smaller than the production models, it’s set up as an 8 string with a single pickup. Aluminum nut and bridge/tailpiece. 8-string pickups built by Gene Imbody, United Lutherie
Builder's Notes: Alligator Lap Steel no. 1 [private reserve]
I flipped for the Fender Stringmaster sound: 24 inch scale; 8 strings; 2 pickups with blend control. I’d doodled the design years ago and jumped to a challenge to build something from the old floorboards of the United Luthierie building in Jacksonville, Ohio. These were oak joists 2 inches thick, 12 inches wide and over 100 years old. There were some problems working around the wet-rot, the nails, etc. and my prototype came out too small to fit in two 8 string pickups, but the 2nd worked well and sounds terrific with the 2 matching pickups in reverse polarity, reverse winding. The third and fourth were built from Douglas fir and sing just great. If I can dig out some cleaner boards from the United Luthierie stash, I’ll work with that again. I discovered the blend pot while putting these together and have now put into several 6 strings. It lets you find the tone you need for any mix. I had to fabricate the hardware for these beasts myself. I cut the nuts out of a rod of stainless steel I scavenged from an old computer printer and the bridges out of an aluminum door frame. |