Tenor lap steel by David Schneider in current GAL issue

[Charles E.]

In the new issue there is an article on how David Schneider built a one off tenor lap steel using Home Depot wood and no mould.

Here is a picture...

http://www.luth.org/images/backissues/al117-120/al120_schneider.jpg

[PT66]

Hi Charley. Thanks for the post. I posted a picture about a year ago under the topic "Tenor Wiessenborn" here on Mandolin Cafe.

[Joel Glassman]

Has anyone played one of these? If tuned to 5ths, there would be a lot of jumping around on the neck. You'd maintain familiar chord shapes though and maybe develop an original style. If it was to be tuned to a chord, I think using a standard lap steel guitar with 6 strings would make more sense.

[DavidKOS]

As a long-time player of 6 and sometimes 8 string lap steels, this would have very limited use in terms of what you could play on it.

It would be brilliant for certain melodic things, Indian music, certain roots styles, etc.

But there are not enough strings to do a tuning like C6 or E7 which would prevent it from being useful inHawaiian music, Western Swing, etc.

Nice axe, needs 2 more strings for me.

[PT66]

I tuned it to an open G chord and played simple slide accompaniment. Not sure how it is tuned by the guy that bought it from me. I haven't seen him in a few months. I like simple things and 4 strings is sometimes enough for me.