Oh well, my search for the slide guitar never seem to end, I've been through quite a few now but never really settled with one..
Here's one I think may be a keeper (at least for the next 3-4 months :lol: ) - bought a cheap used Squier Strat and went to work. It's designed to make David Lindley, the king of bad taste and polyester, intensly jealous:
The pickup is a GFS "Dream 90" P-90 pickup, one hot little screamer...
I've already challenged Ian @ Diamond Bottlenecks to make me a matching slide! :shock: :wink:
Here's a close up:
8)
I generally don't much care for Strats, but that one's cool.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
we have the bling in da house...uh huh un huh.
I like strats. and that is a nice ride Steinar.
it make look showy in a living room, but it will look great on stage.
the P90 and a strat five way sounds like a nice combination.
personally I like that you haven't found the "one" yet. I enjoy seeing and listening to the ones you don't keep.
the P90 and a strat five way sounds like a nice combination.
No 5-way on this, I wanted to keep it simple and go for just one pickup, thinking that if it works on a lap steel then why not on a bottleneck slider. The trick is to experiment with caps of various values, to get the most out of the tone control and that one pickup.. Still not quite there yet, but it's close...
I've pretty much 'converted' to Teles over Strats, but the Strats are so much easier to modify for a project like this with the huge pickguard, and then you can route the body as you please (if it doesn't already have the "bathtub" routing).
Steinar, I'm curious - you've been playing slide AND lap-steel for a long time, right? Now on a lap-steel, all the strings are at the same height - lay a slide across them, it'll touch all the strings, yes? (I'm guessing here - never even seen a lap-steel close up, let alone played one. Seems logical, though.) But on a Strat, or Tele, or most electrics for that matter, aren't the strings "staggered" - all at slightly different heights to follow the contour of the fret board? OK, by adjusting the saddle height, you can make them all the same height - but won't that throw the intonation out a little?
Like I said, I'm curious - I know next to nothing about setting a guitar up. I've played bottleneck slide for a while now, and enjoy it - use mostly open G, sometimes standard tuning. What I'd like to do is set my old Squier Custom Tele up PROPERLY for bottleneck, so any information would be gratefully received. Like - WOULD you make all the strings level with each other, so that some are higher off the fretboard?
:D :D :D
Vic
"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)
Different folks have different opinions about that, and it mostly depends on what you want to play. If you want to play full barred chords, you either need flat strings or a concave curved slide (as many wine bottle necks and some commercial slides are) to cover all the arched strings with equal pressure. But I know people who prefer arched strings and flat slides. One reason is that you can easily contact one or two strings in the middle without touching others to either side. (Think of how a violin's strings are arched, with a flat bow.) Can be useful for playing single note lines. Also, it makes it easier to "reach in" with the tip of a tilted slide to touch a string in the middle.
Sort of like the issue of whether to raise the nut or not. If you do, you have effectively a lap steel, playable only with slide. If you want to be able to play with fretting also (as you do with a lot of solo playing and commonly in various styles of blues), leave the action lower with a normal nut height.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
I set them up same way I do standard guitars, letting the string radius follow the fretboard, though I would probably have flattened it a little bit if the guitar had a vintage Fender 7,5" radius. Most 'modern' guitars these days,including Fenders, have a 9,5" radius or even flatter (like Gibson's 12") and I don't have any problems with that.
8)
the P90 and a strat five way sounds like a nice combination.
No 5-way on this, I wanted to keep it simple and go for just one pickup, thinking that if it works on a lap steel then why not on a bottleneck slider. The trick is to experiment with caps of various values, to get the most out of the tone control and that one pickup.. Still not quite there yet, but it's close...
I've pretty much 'converted' to Teles over Strats, but the Strats are so much easier to modify for a project like this with the huge pickguard, and then you can route the body as you please (if it doesn't already have the "bathtub" routing).
perhaps all that pearloid blinded my eyes.
so the five way switch is disconnected? do you have a pot to bleed off treble if you wanted?
Yep, there's no switch anywhere on the guitar, it's just P90 - vol/tone pots - output. Kinda "Van Halenized".. :D
I'm not completely happy with the tone control as it is now, so I'll try some high-end caps (have a Jupiter .01 cap in a drawer somewhere, will probably work better than the current standard cap).
yeah, I would think even a minimum of tone control would be helpful...towards fine tuning the sound.
thanks for posting S.
Yesterday I got my hands on a Fender 52 Reissue Tele neck, so that obviously had to go on my new Tele,- which left me with a spare Mighty Mite Tele neck. I decided to try and put it on the "Pearloid Slider" since the original Squier neck was very thin and whimpy.
Ever tried making a Tele neck fit a Strat body? That's 45 minutes of professional wrestling........ :shock: :lol: .....but eventually it fit and after readjusting the intonation it turned out real nice. Definitely sounds better, the meatier MM neck added some extra punch, plus it looks better too - the small Tele headtock looks a bit funny on a Strat body, but I much prefer it over the huge '70s Strat headstock of the Squier neck, and the maple fretboard added some much needed "class"..
8)
The matching pearloid cover on the P-90 is a nice touch, too!
I have here a Rio Grande Vintage Tallboy pickup that I tried unsuccessfully to put into my "Yellow Peril" custom Allen Melbert lap steel the other night. I screwed it into the cover and soldered it to the pots before discovering to my chagrin that the baseplate was just a hair too wide to go into the routed well in the steel, which I really don't feel like routing out further now. I ordered a Strat lipstick pickup I'm going to try in there instead of the EMG Select, which lacks treble brightness. Anyway, why I got started on this is that the top plate on it is Creme Pearl, which just about matches your Strat-O-Slider. Looking at my boy's customized Highway 1 Strat (maroon, hand polished to a lovely soft sheen, with an "aged lime green" pickguard that's actually a cream color, I think it'll match it well. Think I'll stick it in the bridge position and surprise him when he gets home in a few days. Probably would've sounded great but looked really funny in that bright yellow lap steel.
"A cheerful heart is good medicine."
Nice one Steinar.....give us a short clip of that baby in action ! :cool:
Slip___Sliding___Away__________
.....give us a short clip of that baby in action ! :cool:
Here's one, quickly recorded to satisfy 'public demand' on another forum.... :wink:
8)
.....give us a short clip of that baby in action ! :cool:
Here's one, quickly recorded to satisfy 'public demand' on another forum.... :wink:
8)
Damn !! That sounds sweet. That pickup really sounds like a true P-90....... growl and all :cool:
You have a great touch for slide :wink:
Slip___Sliding___Away__________
