Patent Fender Lap Steel Guitar 1940s Art Print    US $12.99

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Vintage Fender Lap Steel Electric Guitar

Fender’s lap steel guitar is just as its name suggests; a guitar made of steel which sits across your lap. There are also versions, which sit on a stand in front of you. Lap steels were in production from the early twenties but in 1945 it was the very first guitar designed by Fender, who at that time were just into fixing guitars and not building them. This first Fender lap steel was sold in a set, along with a tweed amplifier and successful sales of this model, led the way for Fender to set up in business officially manufacturing guitars and not just repairing them.

The Fender Lap Steel electric guitar is fantastic for producing the delightful ‘Honky-tonk’ swing sound of early country-style play and is most commonly associated with Hawaiian, Country, Bluegrass, or Western Swing music.

A lap steel electric guitar has its strings slightly raised at both the nut and bridge ends of the fingerboard, which means the frets are there purely for decorative effect. It is played using a metal slide in the left hand, which slides along the strings to change the pitch of the guitar, whilst the guitarist strums and plucks the strings with their right hand. The use of the metal bar restricts how many chords can be played on the lap steel so it tends to be used for playing melodies. The player usually plucks the strings with a plastic thumb pick attached to the thumb and sometimes also with a fingerpick fitted on each finger.

There are quite a few models of Fender Lap Steel Electric Guitar including; The K&F, The Organ Button, The Princeton, The Deluxe, The Dual Professional, The Champion, The Studio Deluxe, The Custom and The String master.

The K&F was named after Doc Kaufman (K) and Leo Fender (F) the company founders. It was a very basic design, really just consisting of a slab of wood with a single coil pickup and steel finish.

The Dual Professional electric lap steel came in a number of variations on its design. Some had a blond finish whilst others were walnut, the pickups were rectangular on some and trapezoidal on others and some were 6 string versions, whilst others had 8 strings. The fret marks were shaped like arrowheads on a number of them and Roman numerals on others.

The Stringmaster was by far the most superior lap steel electric guitar produced by Fender and indeed is considered by some the best lap steel ever made by any company. It featured two pickups which were counterbalanced for a humbucking effect, which significantly reduced interference and is particularly popular amongst Rock guitarists. The Stringmaster also allowed better tone control which helped to enhance the musician’s personal sound.

Fender discontinued its lap steel guitar range in 1981.