Initial Thoughts about Troubled Tele's pickups

Nick Ellingworth

Senior Member
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After a few months I've finally got round to installing the pickup that Troubled Tele wound for me in my lapsteel. The original pickup was a generic piece of chinese rubbish, so it was noisy, tinny and generally awful. With TT's pickup in the guitar it's been transformed the sound is clear and warm (for a strat style single coil), with a bit of reverb it absolutely nails the bluesy tone I was after. It also responds really well to my ebow.

I intend to record a sample in the next couple of days, I want to find the right amp settings and get the new strings played in a little bit.

 
Well I promised a clip and here it is, I didn't attempt anything flashy, just a basic bluesy improv complete with dodgy timing and multiple mistakes. :icon_biggrin:
 
Hey Nick.
Love the sound of that clip.  Proper old school vibe going on.  It'd sound great with a bit of tremolo for that throbbing spaghetti western sound.

Tell me more about the lapsteel.  I've been tempted by one or ages, but never really know where to start.  I know Duesenberg make one which is supposed to be good, but I cant really afford it at the moment.

 
My lapsteel is one of the simple Harley Benton things made in china (or somewhere in the far east atleast) for the German webstore Thomann.de, I think I paid something like £65 for it (current price is £70). So as I said in the first post it's stock electrics really were poor, however replacing them with decent things was a little stressful as I had to widen the rout slightly to take CTS pots and original pickup was slightly smaller than a regular strat pickup so I had to modify the metal pickguard too, which I discovered upon installing the pickup is a little crooked, that limits the maximum height of the pickup a little so the guitar is fairly quiet.

Worth doing all the work though as I really like the sound and after I posted the clip I discovered that Syd Barrett style weird slide routines sound even better than the bluesy stuff, although I don't have the skill on a lapsteel yet to be able to play them well.
 
Side comment...honestly the thought of using my Ebow on my lap steel had never occurred to me!  What a great application!  Thanks, for that bit of inspiration, at least!
 
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