pick ups used in early fender lap steel guitars

Many guitar players change or modify their guitar’s pickups when they want to experiment with sound and tone. You can change your slide, pick up, add or remove pedals, or tinker with the strings. There are tons of ways to get a sound that’s your own from your lap steel some of them are more creative than others. While they’re similar in construction to a regular electric or acoustic guitar, the way they’ve played and how they sound is unique. The E7 tuning is used when learning with the Mel Bay Steel Guitar Method instructional books.Į7 tuning is B0-D-E-G#-B-E or with the 6th string lowered to the tonic E: E-D-E-G#-B-EĪlso see more about Lap Steel and different tunings at Brad’s Page of Steel.Lap steel guitars are truly a world of their own. This tuning is a good for those old Hank Williams records. Western Swing and Country lap steel players generallyy use a C6 tuning. Modified C6 tuning, with a Bb in the bass: Bb-E-G-A-C-E Dobro players also generally use a set of strings with different gauges than those used on standard electric or acoustic guitars to help them to project more sound and to achieve their higher tunings. These tunings are possible on a lap steel or square neck Dobro that can take the extra stress, but could cause damage on a round-neck resonator or standard guitar. They also sometimes raise it up to “High-A”: A-C#-E-A-C#-E. David Lindley is another player who uses transposed variations of these tunings.īluegrass and Country Dobro players using a square-neck instrument tend to favor an altered G tuning, often called “High-G”, where the 6th string is tuned up to “G” instead of down to “D”, and the 5th string is also tuned up, to B: G-B-D-G-B-D. Joe Perry of Aerosmith uses Open E on his electric lap steel. Most Rock and Blues players use open G/open A or open D/open E. During the 1920s and 1930s, much of the sheet music written for lap steel utilized open A tuning as the de facto standard tuning for the instrument. Sometimes an extended chord like a 6th, 7th, or 9th. Usually they are tuned to an open chord like G, D, E or even A. Lap steel guitars are not tuned in standard guitar tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E, low to high). Tunings I learned from several sources including Wikipedia I am a horrible lap steel player, but still a fun time trying. GE Smith Tele was inspired by Fender Lap Steel

Pick ups used in early fender lap steel guitars