John Kavanagh
From:
Kentville, Nova Scotia, Canada * R.I.P.
|
Posted 4 Oct 2000 5:16 am |
|
I made an acoustic 8-string lap guitar out of an old dreadnought and the result, though butt-ugly and certain to make any kind of serious craftsman shake his head, works just
fine: plays great, and even sounds pretty good. This was a stupid hacker project that
shouldn't have worked, but I got lucky and I'm having so much fun with the result that I'm passing the idea along, in case anyone else has an old steel-string guitar with an unfixably warped neck out there, and has been
wondering what to do with it.
I put a raised nut on this guitar years ago, and used it as a six-string lap guitar, but I'd always wanted eight, so I could use the same tunings as my electric.
So: I took two four-inch carriage bolts (this is where the real luthiers start to squirm) and cut the heads and threaded parts off, leaving me with two pieces of plain steel rod about ΒΌ" in diameter and about three inches long. I drilled two holes in the headstock below the 1st and 6th string
holes and put on a set of mandolin tuners. (If it had originally been a 12-string, this would have been even easier.) The new "nut"
extends past the neck on both side, and outside strings are over empty space. This looks weird and makes the guitar a little awkward to pick up, but doesn't present a playing problem.
I made a nut blank on a piece of paper by tracing the top of the old nut, then moving the nut along the paper two string-spaces to make an 8-string nut template. I notched one of the rods to this spacing. I didn't use the same spacing as my electric 8, because I
wanted the strings parallel, and the wider spacing is nice for slants.
I used the other rod as a saddle, just wedged it in under the strings over
the original saddle slot. (I was surprised this worked) I drilled two more holes in the bridge, one on either side of the original
six, and again preserving the same spacing.
I strung it up, using first the middle 8 strings of a 10-string C6 set, but
the tension seemed too high so I moved everything down one string, winding up with the top 8 strings of the same set.
The tuning I settled on was high G6: GBdegbd'e'.
I've got a real Frankenstein here , but it's great to have an acoustic 8 for jamming and practising unplugged, and it's portable. It took about two hours to do, and the expenditure for me was the cost of strings and about $1.50 for the bolts, because I already had the mando tuners and some spare bridge pins.
[This message was edited by John Kavanagh on 04 October 2000 at 06:26 AM.] |
|
Chris Walke
From:
St Charles, IL
|
Posted 4 Oct 2000 6:48 am
|
|
Acoustic lap steel...great idea. I've been hoping to find a short scale acoustic 8-string with more of a lap steel body, as opposed to acoustic gtr type of body. No luck yet. An 8-string reso guitar would be cool, but I don't have the money for one of those. Closest I've seen is the Road-o-phonic, made by Paul Beard. He only makes a 6-string version.
I want the acoustic lap steel for the very same reason you made yours: easy to pull out for practicing, jam sessions. I hate being the only one that has to bring an amp to the "front porch." |
|
John Kavanagh
From:
Kentville, Nova Scotia, Canada * R.I.P.
|
Posted 4 Oct 2000 12:17 pm
|
|
I saw a picture of a 10-string acoustic that an acquaintance made, and I've heard tape of it, and it sounds very nice. I think he has some real woodworking skills, but it was basically just a box with a resonator set in it. If you could buy a resonator and a set of tuners (You could use zither/autoharp pins), it wouldn't be hard to make a rectangular or trapezoidal box to fit it in. Lap guitar is a pretty basic instrument structurally, and they say they sound is mostly in the resonator. Go on, give it a try! Acoustic 8 rocks.
And yes, I'd buy a dobro-8 in a minute if I could justify the expense.[This message was edited by John Kavanagh on 04 October 2000 at 01:19 PM.] |
|
