Jimmy Page's guitar

[BobTheDog]

Lap steels are very simple things, those Harley Benton's from Thomann look like as good a place as any to start.

Thanks, they are remarkably cheap!

[Wonks]

That Old Kraftsman pickup looks pretty unique, so no easy replacement choice. That bit of metal you see is probably the pole piece and there’s a coil wound round it below the plastic cover.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of height between the strings and the body, so hopefully there’s a decent depth of control cavity underneath that area.

The lack of intonation adjustment on the bridge (it’s not even angled like an acoustic’s) means that it’s never going to be a great instrument and the higher up you play, the more out of tune the chords will be.

So you can either try and keep it as original as possible, or else upgrade it with a toploading hardtail bridge and put a modern pickup on it. Measure the string spacing, but it looks to be a fairly standard width spacing, between 50-52mm, so a standard Strat pickup should fit.

It may be that you could pick up a cheap loaded Strat scratchplate, cut out the middle pickup section, use that as the control plate and re-use the one tone and the volume knob and pot. Again you’d have to measure to see what space you have available. A new bridge doesn’t have to sit on the cover like the original.

[John Egan]

I bought myself an 8 string Joe Morrell lap steel some time ago and have been very happy with it (my playing apart!). It's certainly not fancy, just a simple block of poplar with a metal fingerboard plate and made in the USA. But it came at a reasonable price, from a UK dealer (though I can't for the life of me remember which one). I keep it tuned to E9.
Regards, John

[merlyn]

The lack of intonation adjustment on the bridge (it’s not even angled like an acoustic’s) means that it’s never going to be a great instrument and the higher up you play, the more out of tune the chords will be.

A straight bridge is right for a lap steel, or a guitar set up to only play slide on. A compensated bridge on an acoustic, or adjustable saddles on an electric are to compensate for the string bending out of tune as it is pushed down.

On a lap steel the strings are not being pushed down, so there is no need for compensation. Look at any lap steel and you'll see the bridge is straight.