New Artisan Lap Steel

The other day I was overcome by GAS and ordered one of those Artisan lap steels for $60 from MusiciansFriend. It arrived this afternoon, waiting on the front steps when I got home.

As background, I've been wanting a lap steel for a long time. I live in the home town of Morrell Music, and am quite familiar with the Morrell lap steels, particularly their cheap student model. IMO, they suck! They're hastily and shoddily put together. (I know some of the folks who've built them.) The thing that bugs me most about them is that I have yet to see one with the strings properly aligned with the pole pieces of the pickup. Their hardware is crummy. I've come really close to buying one on a couple of occasions, but the best price I've seen one on sale for was something like $134, and I just didn't think they were worth that. (This while looking over several to choose from.)

This $60 Artisan is a big step above the Morrell student model, IMO. First off, it looks good. Mine is the metallic red, a sort of medium red with gold metal flake in it that looks sort of coppery overall. (My wife called it "orange.") The surface is nice and smooth, the corners are well rounded, the paint and "headstock" decal are neatly applied and clearcoated, the "fretboard" and hardware are all neatly installed with no visible imperfections. The "fretboard" is moulded black plastic, with a gold coating on the "frets" and Roman numeral fret markers on the III, V, VII, IX and XII frets, repeated in the next octave up. It has 28 "frets" total. The headstock is slotted. It has open geared tuners, as commonly seen on classic guitars. They're all the same, not left and right, so the ones for the three treble strings turn backward. The nut is carved from what looks like the "rosewood" that is used for many guitar fretboards. It's equipped with a hardtail Strat type bridge (with the saddles all adjusted in a straight line, as a lap steel doesn't need intonation compensation), a Strat type bridge pickup, tone and volume pots, and a jack, all mounted in a bright chromed steel coverplate mounted over a "swimming pool" routed cavity like that in a Strat body, but of course much smaller. The pickup has staggered pole pieces for the steeply arched Fender type setup, while the strings are set flat. I haven't noticed a problem with the string volumes sounding out of balance, though; the pickup's not too close to the strings. As others have noted, the jack could have been better located. It's on the near side of the coverplate for a right handed player, and can interfere with the heel of the right hand. Some recommend using a right-angled cable to get around this, but I haven't found it a big problem to play with a straight cable, especially if I angle the neck away from me a bit.

It has a very nice tone. (I'm playing it through my Electar Tube 10 now.) It is equipped with rather light electric strings, I'm guessing probably about .010-.046", but I haven't measured them. Well, having just typed that, I put down my barbeque sandwich, went and got my micrometer and steel rule and measured. The strings are .010-.049". The scale length is 21". I'm sure it'll sound even better when I put some fatter strings on it. I've got some .012-.052" electric strings around here, and I may try some of the Martin Bluegrass Resonator Guitar .016-.056", as they're wound with "a special nickel alloy steel" that ought to be magnetic. (I know that those strings, designed to be used on bluegrass dobros tuned to "high bass G," will tune to Open E without breaking.)

Oh, yeah: What I bought for a steel is a Dunlop 921 Stainless Steel, 1" dia. x 3-3/4" long, 11.5 oz. MusiciansFriend calls it a "Heavy" Dunlop Stainless Pro Tone Bar. It's a solid cylinder with a round bullet tip on one end. Looks like a sex toy. it is HEAVY! It's a very handy tool, that works for full barring with the main body and works well for playing single notes with the bullet tip while playing other strings open. I can do that to play some things that I do by fretting on bottleneck guitar.

I've been just playing it with bare fingers, but I think I need to put on the metal fingerpicks to get the real steel sound.

Hey, I almost forgot to mention that it came with a very nice fitted gig bag. That wasn't mentioned in the ad on MusiciansFriend. When you peel the protective wrapping off it, don't accidentally discard the tiny wrench for adjusting the saddles as I almost did. You won't need to adjust the saddles, but it may come in handy for use on another guitar.

I'll play with it some more in a bit. Might record a sound bite.