Impressed with this little Morrell

Jeff Strouse · From: Jacksonville, Florida, USA

Morrell lap steel on eBay.

I had a chance to test drive one of these last week, and was surprisingly impressed. I used to have an 8 string Little Roy Wiggins model, but didn't care much for it because the string spacing was too tight, and there was no tone knob.

However, I was quite impressed with this little lapsteel. It is visually very pleasing...it has an nice contrast with the wood frame and the fretboard. I never really liked the looks of the standard Morrell fretboard (like on the LRW model). This whole guitar looks really sharp in person. A class act.

It has both a vol and tone knob (plain ones, too...not those cheap black ones with the silly numbers on it), and the string spacing is good. It had a very nice sound for this price range of a steel. It was tuned to dobro G. I didn't get a chance to measure the scale length.

I thought it was important to post this since Morrells have gotten some "not so favorable" reviews in the past. This was surprisingly a nice little steel that I think would be just as good to start out on as any in its class.

Edited by Brad Bechtel to shorten the URL.

[This message was edited by Brad Bechtel on 05 January 2006 at 11:20 AM.]

Brad Bechtel · From: San Francisco, CA

It looks similar to the Chandler RH-2 lap steel. I'm glad to see Morrell is responding to user feedback and attempting to compete in the market!

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Malcolm Leonard · From: Rhode Island, USA

This appears to be light years ahead of my Morrell Pro model as it came from the factory.
I stripped it of its ugly black,not-at-all smooth finish,made a new mahogany fretboard to replace the painted on one,upgraded the cheesy tuners to Grovers,changed the pickup to a P-90 and am on the final finishing steps now.Factory stock it was pretty bad.

I bought it as a factory blem from the same eBay dealer(Jakes) as shown in the post,here.Service was polite and personalized from this dealer.Nice folks to do business with!
Malcolm

[This message was edited by Malcolm Leonard on 11 January 2006 at 06:45 AM.]

Jude Reinhardt · From: Weaverville, NC

If you'd like a better view of one of these, look at this item on ebay, 7378561744. It's the one I bought from Jakes and decided to sell. As you can see the reserve wasn't met so I've decided to keep it.
I've been trying to learn on a Cougar S-8 with the longer scale and was having trouble with the 22" scale of the Morrell. I've been working with it though and am beginning to like it. I knocked the high gloss finish back with some OOOO steel wool and rubbing oil and put a set of Scottie's SIT C6 strings on it. I'd like to replace the stamped tailpiece/bridge with something better.
What really made me decide to keep was letting someone that really knows what they're doing play Harbor Lights on it for me. In the hands of a player it is really nice.

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