Picture of my 8 string creation

[WineRider]

This is the final build now I think it's OK. I still have a couple of issue's with my work, but I like the tone of it...just me playing it is the major problem!!!

Winerider

[Barry]

Looks nice.

[joehw]

Nice work!
A very well finished guitar. Congrats!
What pickup did you go for?

[WineRider]

Hi, joehw,

After considering several options I fitted a DiMarzio Ionizer8, It's sound is good for me and the pole spacing is exactly right. Easy to fit, but I did canibilise two mounts to make one. A bit of cutting and shutting...it works.

WineRider aka Maurice

[sabatica]

Looks great. Console steels make sense indeed. Lap playing seems a bit like playing keyboard on your lap. Hahaha

[Ken Byng]

Nice job Maurice.

[WineRider]

Thank you all for your compliments...It's a shame I can't play the bloody thing worth a jot, but I sure give the neighbours a jolt now and again, when I get a phrase right. It was great making it and it is playing it, but I will add this: Ken it's easier for me to lap the IoM TT circuit at close to 100mph than to play a creation that as you now know I should have been playing from 1963 onwards...such is life.

WineRider

[Ken Byng]

Maurice
We all have to make career choices in life. You chose a route of M/C racing, and some of your memories will be priceless.

I started playing lap steel in 1963 aged 14. Different road, but we meet up at a junction later in life.

My oldest pupil was aged 73, and he picked it up pretty well. You're never too old to start on this great instrument.

[WineRider]

Morning Ken,

Well let me see 1963if it was around July then I would have been 18 and classed as professional road racer, although in those days we all had to have some sort of day job, an understanding boss, who allowed us time off for racing. You're right about the memories, last night I was in a melacholly mood watching some of the Barry Sheen story on BBC 2, aren't satellites wonderful!!!! but I had to give in and record it for another day, it brought back many, many memories. But thenI went into my small music room come office, sat down and played something that I have been struggling with, "Silver Threads and Golden Needles" like I have never played before...so where is the psychology in that? Is music all down to the mind...with a little help from the right and left hand?

Maurice

[Ken Byng]

Maurice
Psychology plays a huge part in music and performance. Hence why sometimes one can play a gig absolutely flawlessly, and on another occasion you can't piece 2 notes together. The brain is a very strange and complex organ.

1963 was a very important year for me. A guy in my class brought a Santo & Johnny single to school. It was Teardrop, with The Long Walk Home on the B-side. That was the moment when I knew that I had to play steel guitar, (I think that they call it an epiphany moment), and my dad bought me a s/h lap steel. The guitarist in my dad's combo also played lap steel, and brilliantly too. His name was Kealoha Life. I spent a lot of times just quietly watching and listening to him play. Yep 1963 was a memorable year for me, the longest and hardest winter I can remember, and the year that I took up playing steel guitar.