Student slide guitar

Welcome aboard! 8)
I don't know the scale length of 3/4 size guitars, but 22,5" scale is pretty common for lap steels and I guess that's pretty close to your guitar.

Steinar

welcome young slide man. very very often I play my electrics just as you have discovered. a nut raiser is a nice.
my lap steels are 22.5 inches in scale. have you tried open tunings yet?

Yeah, that'll work. Another thing I'll recommend is to keep an eye on Rondo Music: http://rondomusic.com/ Their SX lap steel is a nice beginner instrument.

Yes, I have played bluegrass dobro for a while now(dbgdbg), and recently started playing blues in open d both lap style and regular. I feel much more comfortable playing lap style, but for the blues I don't think it sounds quite as gritty as playing regular. I wanted to try some electric so I bought that student size, which I measure to be about 18.5 scale, but it's just too high pitched for me. I think I may just get a cheap lap steel or a squire strat to mess around with. I'm leaning towards the strat so I can play it both ways. Do these sound decent for slide playing? I know alot of times when playing acoustic slide that the cheap guitars sound good.

Wow, you're right. I just checked out that site.$110 for a new lap steel and case. That sounds like a great deal, and definately falls within my price range. Thanks

You're welcome. I have one of those and love it. The only flaw on mine is that the pickup was laterally misaligned with the strings. Without any woodworking, I loosened the pickup's screws and shoved it to the side so the strings are well inside the edges of the pole pieces, not centered, but as high as the strings are I doubt it makes any difference. I could work on it and center it perfectly, but I figured good enough's good enough. Can't complain at the price; when I got mine last April it was $99.99! That case is really nice, BTW. Has a carrying strap with it, too.

Oh, as for Strats, I'll advise against them if raised nut slide playing's your intention. Too much fretboard and string arch, and that "trem" bridge is a real PIA when you're retuning or changing string gauges.

And you do give up some important abilities when you raise the strings and play slide exclusively. You can't do any fretting, which is mighty handy to be able to do if you're playing solo. You can't play the basic blues shuffle rhythm lap style. You can't do the Bukka White Aberdeen, Mississippi I-IV chord alternation by hammering on and off the 1st fret of the 3rd string and 2nd fret of the 5th string in Open D. You can't fret behind or ahead of the slide to make altered chords like minors, sevenths, sus4, "sus2," and sixths. You can slant and play partial chords, but the fretting ability gives you a lot more options. It's nice to throw in some purely fretted stuff for variety. I love to play lap style, but keep going back to bottleneck in the main. And I'd never raise a nut on a "spanish" guitar for bottleneck.

So you play your acoustics with the nut just as it comes? I got a free washburn beater and I shimmed the nut slightly to avoid the fret knocking. What string gauges do you use on your acoustics.

I wouldn't DREAM of raising the nut at all. Ruins the intonation. I usually use 12s for both acoustic and electric slide, but 10s work fine and Vic uses 9s. ( I played 9s for a while when I got an Epi that came strung with them. I can't stand to take off perfectly good strings and throw them away before they need changing.) Personally I like the action higher than some at the 12th fret, in the 1/8" to 5/32" range. Takes learning to stop the slide in the proper position by muscle memory, not relying on string tension to stop it. And some fret knocking's a normal part of the slide sound, and why bottleneck sounds "grittier" than lap style. My guitar teacher often didn't bring an instrument to lessons. He'd grab random new guitars off the store racks, tune into my open tuning of the day and play. He was absolutely killer! Shows what you can do with great slide control. Anyone can learn it with practice.