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Topic: Melbert 8 String |
Dave Welch
From:
Latrobe PA USA
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Posted 18 Apr 2010 9:01 am |
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These steels are great to play and better to listen to. Somewhere down the road I plan to get a Sierra 8 string, but at 1500 bucks, this will be a couple years away. Meanwhile, for the money, I found a very high quality lap steel handmade by a craftsman up in Tennessee. These things are extremely well made at about a fourth the cost.
From the beautifully finished cherry body to the properly filed aluminum nut, I was highly impressed. You can tell when you start to play it, it's a solid well crafted instrument. Jack plate, pickup plate and fretboard all fit well, no warping anywhere. Under the plate, it's all hand wired and the pickup cavity is completely shielded.
Mine was an ebay purchase, and I wanted to get a higher output pickup. The original narrow Wallace pickup sounded great, but I wanted more oomph to match my Telecaster. So I contacted Bob Allen, designer and builder of these guitars. I asked him if he could recommend such a pickup for his guitar. He responded immediately (late at night!) and was very helpful. He suggested a Wallace TrueTone TT-8 which is a larger one with considerably more winding. I sent the guitar to him and this man turned it around in about 3 days! Along the way, he sent me photos of the guitar as he worked on it to show me its progress. To fit the larger pickup, he had to route the cavity larger, add more shielding, and replace the original plate with a larger one. He even noticed a crack in the jack plate, and put on a new one at no cost. And the whole job was super reasonable, about what you might pay if you bought the pickup alone! (He accepted the original pickup as a trade-in). I'm extremely pleased with the guitar's tone, output, appearance and playability. Bob really was a big help, especially since I was not the original purchaser!
You can check out his guitars at "Music on the Mountain" website www.musonmt.com |
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John Billings
From:
Ohio, USA
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Posted 18 Apr 2010 11:17 am
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| Looks like a very nice guitar, and a a GREAT price too! |
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Paul DiMaggio
From:
Fort Nelson, British Columbia, Canada
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Posted 18 Apr 2010 2:00 pm
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| Bob Allen puts out a very good product along with exceptional service and communications. All at a reasonable price! |
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Paul M. Matthews
From:
New Jersey, USA
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Posted 20 Apr 2010 8:22 am Melbert Music on the Mountain
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I just had an 8 string Melbert 8 Pro Lap Steel made by Bob Allen and I must say this man walks you through the whole process from blank cut out of your choice of wood he has available, stain color, pickup, knob location, strings for the tuning you want, for some models their is free shipping, a gig bag w/chord and he emails pictures of "Your Baby" from start to finish. Also, a more pleasant helpful person is hard to find now-a-days. Bob...U-Da-Man!!
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I want to Steel it all..... |
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Rusty Smith
From:
Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, USA
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Posted 20 Apr 2010 12:59 pm
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I have an 8 string Kiyoshi "Lion" Kobayashi model and have been very pleased with it. Great value and quality. Bob is very easy to deal with.
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Rusty Smith
Mount Horeb WI |
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Garry Vanderlinde
From:
CA
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Posted 20 Apr 2010 8:30 pm
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Yes, I agree Bob Allen is someone to go to for help on any lap steel project.
Or just buy one of his very reasonable priced finished steels like the Lion Kobayashi model. Mine is very similar except I went for a vibrato bar so I could play Surf music,ha-ha
He helped me get the right parts for a dream project of mine that I wasn't sure about how to get started on. And he made it very affordable too along with all of his free good advice. |
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