After a lot of searching, I've recently acquired my first lap steel - an original Airline from the early '60s ('63 I think but I could be wrong). I'm loving the string-through pickup tones through a Vibrolux Reverb - both clean and cranked.
I've been playing guitar on and off for about 50 years now (I suddenly feel old
), and have played acoustic and electric bottleneck in the past, mainly in Open G/A and Open D/E. I'm thinking I'll stay in these tunings for lap steel at first and progress to other tunings down the track.I've got some questions about this guitar and would greatly appreciate some assistance and opinions from the collective wisdom here.
- It's currently strung with 12-52 flat wounds which are ok but a bit slack in Open D/G given the very short 21" scale length. Would a set of 13-56 flat wounds make enough of a tension difference for these tunings or do I need something heavier?
- The pickup is missing one of the rear screws. Does anyone know of a replacement source and/or what gauge/thread size I should be looking for?
- The pickup and volume/tone pots are working well enough, but I want to "get under the hood" and do some selective desoldering to measure the component values out-of-circuit. I've replaced plenty of guitar pickups and controls before and have built pedals and amps, so I'm confident in my own ability but I'm wondering if there are any known pitfalls or standard procedures in removing the pickup?
Cheers,
Dougal
