The bridge and nut are pieces of brass bar stock. A lap steel is the easiest instrument in the universe to build I think. i've taken a break from it for a week or two to catch up on some other things in life, but i'll be picking up the build again in the next few days. I built this one out of a piece of northern white pine.
#LAP STEEL FRETBOARD TEMPLATE FREE#
Free shipping on many items Browse your favorite brands. Search the Tele Home Depot forum for a thread titled "Fender Champion-inspired Lap Steel" for build photos and details. Get the best deals on lap steel fretboard when you shop the largest online selection at.
it won't be an exact copy, but i wasn't going for total accuracy either. i drew out a template, but ended up just making a bunch of layout lines on my wood and redrawing it by hand directly onto the wood to tweak a few little things here and there. The only measurement that's different on mine is that i believe the original necks on the Champions were 3" wide, whereas i made mine 2.75" wide. the quality didn't need to be super-clear, since i was just using it for measurements. i used a pretty large hi-res photo, and i think i ended up blowing it up to about 127%. once they all seemed to match up, i was able to get the rest of the measurements off of it. i kept track of known measurements that i WAS able to find (or already knew), like tuner post diameter, scale length, body width and length, etc. Suffixes in the names indicate additional appointments. Many of the original numbers referred to the price, in dollars, of the model.
The letters ES stand for Electric Spanish, to distinguish them from Hawaiian-style lap steel guitars which are played flat on the lap.
#LAP STEEL FRETBOARD TEMPLATE SERIES#
i ended up finding a large, high-quality front-on photo of a Fender Champion and enlarged it in GIMP until it was the correct size. The Gibson ES series of semi-acoustic guitars (hollow body electric guitars) are manufactured by the Gibson Guitar Corporation. I'm in the process of building a Champion-style lap steel (the thread is around here somewhere.) i couldn't, for the life of me, find any PDF's or templates for any Fender lap steels online.