Artisan EA-1 Lap Steel
I bought this guitar from Musician's Friend for $59. I've wanted a lap steel for a while and this was too good a deal to pass up. I was concerned about the quality of this guitar given the very low price. However, I've been pleased with it so far.
The basics of this lap steel are simple. The body is listed as 'hardwood'. Typically in the past this has meant something along the lines of leftovers you find in the dumpster behind Home Depot. However, the wood used here was surprisingly toneful. Tapping on it produces a nice 'woodblock' sound which makes me think it is maple or a maple laminate.
The tuners are classical style tuners. This is a bit of a concern but they seem to hold well. I've retuned from E7 to C6 several times and it was fine afterwards with no tuning issues.
The nut is made from rosewood and it is uncertain how well it would hold up in the long run. I may eventually replace this with a brass nut. The fretboard is plastic but since you never fret on it, this is fine. The bridge appears to be a hardtail strat style one where each string can be intonated. However, in a lap steel you're responsible for your own intonation.
The pickup is a standard Asian made Strat style pickup. It's not too noisy and has a good single coil tone to it. I haven't opened it up yet to see what the pots were but I'd assume they're very much like those you would find on a Chinese made Strat-oid guitar.
The jack placement is a bit awkward. As you can see in the picture above I solved this by using a 90 degree flat topped cable. The playing tone through my V-Amp and even through a cheap Yamaha battery amp is amazingly good. It certainly sounds better than I can play it!
The icing on the cake was the gig bag that came with it. When they said it came with a gig bag I was expecting something along the lines of a vinyl garbage bag with handles. I was quite surprised to see this nicely made gig bag when I opened the package.
Sounds
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This sound clip starts with an open C6 chord that demonstrates the sustain and tone of the instrument. Following that, I clumsily make my way through a Hawaiian style slide riff.
