Solid Ash Lap Steel Guitar

I saw some of the lap steel guitars on Instructables and I decided to make one. Some of them are basic, made from a 2x4, but as a longtime guitar player and woodworker, I wanted to make mine more like a commercial product. I will explain every step of assembly and touch on all the major design decisions along the way. This is a right-handed version, but there's no reason you couldn't make a left-handed lap steel if that's your preference.

Fair Warning:

Use power tools and painting/finishing chemicals safely, and at your own risk. Wear safety goggles and ear protection when needed. Confidence in your skills is one thing. Losing an eye or your hearing is another. Be safe!

I have about 30 hours in the project and spent around $80 on the parts. Some of them I had on hand, like varnish, (s, duct tape, screws, sandpaper, and knobs. The rest of the guitar parts were purchased from the C.B. Gitty website.

(Full disclosure: I get absolutely nothing for recommending them.)

I bought from them because they sell everything I needed in one handy place, but mostly because they sell a cool chrome plate with a single-coil pickup already mounted, with a bridge with adjustable saddles. You'll see it below. Adjustable saddles are so desirable because they can make very fine adjustments. You need that to get the scale length right, to ensure the guitar is completely playable. What's the scale length?

A Short Digression On Physics, the Scale Length, and Why It Matters: (TL;DR? It's okay to skip this paragraph)

On any stringed instrument, the scale length of a string is the length of its vibrating part, measured from the nut (down by the tuners) up to where it crosses its bridge saddle, next to the pickup(s). On a guitar, one-half of that distance will always be at the 12th fret. If you fret any string at the 12th fret, you will get the same note as the string played open, but one octave higher in pitch. That's the physics of any stringed instrument: halve the length of the vibrating string, and you double the pitch. That's why guitar frets are fixed at progressively shorter and shorter intervals as you go up the neck. One last thing: the actual scale length varies a lot between instruments. Bass guitars have scale lengths of 29" and longer, while ukuleles' scale length is quite short. Lower pitches require longer strings; higher notes sound better with shorter strings.

Don't worry. You can still make a great lap steel guitar without knowing any physics. I made a lot of mistakes encountered many learning opportunities along the way, and it'll still sound great. Just bear in mind that getting the scale length right is the most important part. Everything other design choice is up to you.

The pickup/bridge plate and the pre-measured fretboard make it easy to get the scale length perfect. In case you're a few millimeters off mounting the fretboard, any fine tuning can be made with the adjustable saddles. I'll explain them in detail later.

Warning: There will be a small amount of soldering required. If you don't do soldering, you'll need to find someone who can help you for that part. You can still wire it up, as detailed below, under "Wiring." Or you can buy a pre-wired control harness, using the link in the Parts Needed section.

Tools Needed:

1. Jigsaw
2. Power drill
3. Power sander
4. Drill bits, various sizes 1/16", 3/16", 1/4", 7/16", 1"
5. Hacksaw, both regular size and mini size if you can find it
6. Chisel, sharp
7. Screwdrivers, various sizes
8. Needlenose pliers
9. Wire cutter
10. Files
11. Sandpaper, Grits 60 thru 220. Go higher if you want a smoother finish.
12. 36" metal ruler or straight piece of metal. $10? at Lowes. Necessary for drawing centerline and parts alignment
13. Soldering iron, solder

Nice To Have:

1. Drill press
2. Sanding machine
3. Small drum sander drill bit, 2" diameter
4. Wire stripping tool

While I bought most of this online from C.B. Gitty. You can find all of these parts at many other places on the net, and at higher quality if you're willing to pay for it. However, Gitty's stuff is certainly good enough, and I'm quite happy with how my lap steel guitar plays and sounds. I strongly suggest using their pre-measured 23" acrylic fretboard for your first guitar. But if you're comfortable swapping in another fretboard, and adjusting the design for it, go ahead.

Parts Needed:

1 - 23" clear acrylic fretboard $12

1 - Colored underlay $3.50 I used the blue pearloid but they have other colors.

1 - I also bought some diamond-shaped fret markers from Amazon. Hundreds of styles to see there.

1 - Adjustable bridge plate with pickup pre-installed $17

1 - 6pc. Nickel Press-Fit Tuner Bushings $3 These secure the string ends tightly for tuning.

6 - Tuning machines They sell a variety: 6 strings on one side or 3 to a side. Range: $8 - $15. Sealed are best.

1 - 1/4" output jack (to plug guitar cable into)

1 - Mounting plate for output jack

Note: Gitty also sells the above two parts as one unit, the "1pc Mono Jack Pre-mounted"

1 - A scrap of steel or aluminum angle bar for making a nut. Should be 5/8" to 3/4" on a side. More on that later.

2 - Potentiometers: 1 - 250K "Audio" taper and 1 - 250K "Linear" taper

1 - Capacitor: .047uf, voltage rating not important at all

Note: Gitty sells the above two items, potentiometers and the capacitor, all pre-wired together in a "EconoHarness 250 - pre-wired" for ca. $3.50. You can use that if you don't feel comfortable wiring and soldering.

20ga or 22ga. connection wire in two colors. Preferably white and black but color not important. 18" of each color is plenty

1 - Set of 6 strings. eBay or Amazon, $8 - $15. I use C6 or "Nashville" tuning but get strings for whatever tuning you like.

1 - Steel. This is the piece of metal you'll use to stop the strings and play chords and notes. Regular guitar steels won't quite cover all six strings. You need one made for a steel guitar or a dobro. I prefer one called a Shubb steel but other steel players just use a chrome cylindrical steel with a rounded end. Amazon has many styles from $8 to $30

As you can see from other Intructables here, you can use a 2x4 and it'll come out okay. But I wanted to make as good an instrument as I could, and a solid piece of hardwood resonates better. At a hardwoods lumber provider, I found a piece of ash about 6 feet long and 1-1/4" thick for less than $30. If you can get a piece at least 1" thick, that's great. Ash is good wood for solid guitars, but any hardwood would be your best choice over softer woods like clear pine. If you can only find 1/2" inch hardwood planks, you can glue two thinner planks together to make your blank. But the resulting blank should be at least 1" thick, or as close as you can get to it.

What shape do you want?There are only a few things to bear in mind. Think about your overall length like this:

Minimum length = (Your scale length) + ( 6 - 8" for tuning machines) + (ca. 8" to mount the pickup/bridge plate)

Mine ended up around 31-1/2". You can see from the images that the bridge is mounted quite close to the end of guitar, and that's fine.

Also, I'm including my dimensions as examples, but feel free to change any of them for any reason. Your mileage may vary, right?

As far as width, Gitty's fretboard is 2-3/4" wide while the bridge plate is 3-1/4" wide. On top of that, you'll need some extra width to allow for the cutout for your tone and volume controls.

Once you know your maximum width and length you can cut your blank to length and draw your basic outline. Be as creative here as you want. Go online to Reverb.com or eBay and search for lap steel guitars. You'll find several models of many different shapes to inspire you.

Sketch out your overall shape right on the wood. Use a pencil at first. It also helps to lay things out on your wood blank to get an idea of how to arrange things, and to make sure that all your parts will fit within your design outline. In Step 1 you can see the outlines of the pickup plate I drew as I was laying things out.

It's very important that you draw a prominent centerline on your wood corresponding to the centerline of where your fretboard will be once it's attached. This will be the centerline of your scale length and defines the axis where your strings will be strung. Draw the outline and show where the nut, fretboard, pickup and controls will be located in the final version. You will sand off these lines later, but they will be invaluable as guideposts as you're laying things out.

After you have the final design fully drawn out, get out to the workshop and start sawing!

Here's a shot of my body blank cut to its basic shape, lightly sanded, and with everything laid out on it as a sanity check. You must do this step! Stare at it and nudge things around until you're very comfortable about how it will function. Notice that the fretboard is still covered in its brown protective paper. Don't remove that until the guitar is ready for stringing, with all wiring done, all parts attached, and all body finishing completed.

I cut out the basic shape of my lap steel with a jig saw fitted with a 5" blade. A shorter blade might bind and shatter and I liked the extra control the longer blade gave me. Then I sanded everything smooth with 60-grit sandpaper, using a sanding machine for the flat areas and a small sandpaper drum fitted to a hand drill to smooth the inside corners.

The headstock is where the turning machines are mounted. It can be a tricky area to layout and I made some mistakes. Here's what I learned.

Design your headstock wide enough so that you have more separation between the strings laterally. In other words, I wish I'd made my headstock with straighter sides instead of tapering toward the end. Look at the image of a Gibson above; that's a better way to do it. It flares out wider out at the end than it is at the nut. This will keep the tuners spaced far enough apart that the strings won't interfere with each other as they lead toward the nut.

It will also make the angle that the 1st and 6th strings make with the nut less acute. Notice how my 6th and 1st strings come across the nut at a steep angle. I haven't had any problems yet, but I wish I had made a wider headstock so each tuner would have a straighter path to its string slot on the nut.

Note: The headstock has to be no thicker than about 9/16" - 5/8" in order to be able to install most tuning machines. Check the specs of your tuning machines to know how thick to make the headstock. So how to make just the headstock thinner?

I used the jigsaw to cut about half of the thickness from my headstock, and then I smoothed the transition from the now-thinner headstock area into the thickness of the body. This wasn't the best choice of tools for the job.

What I suggest (assuming you have access to a router) is to use set to the proper depth to remove the excess wood down to the proper thicknes. Then I'll use a chisel and sandpaper to shape that smooth transition into the neck.)

On the headstock, measure off the centerline of your wood blank. Use it as a reference to align the holes for your tuning machines equally on both sides. Even if your design calls for all six tuners on one side, have a center reference will help, and allow a little more length for the headstock. I left about 3" of empty wood right at the end of the wood and I could have spread the tuning machines out a little more.

Be sure of roughly where your nut is going to go before you drill the tuner holes. Make sure the nearest tuners won't be too close to the nut to interfere with each other.

Also, make sure that the holes for your tuning pegs are drilled close enough to the side edges of the headstock so that the tuning pegs will project far enough out to the side to turn easily. I was nervous about mounting them too close to the outer edges. Luckily, they all just turn without binding. But if I do this again, I'll have more faith in the strength of my wood and mount them just a tad closer to each edge. Click the [more images] link for a picture of a production guitar to see what I mean.

Once your holes are drilled, fit the tuners into the holes. They'll probably have a small hole for a fixing screw; you'll need to drill holes for those, too. These will be very small holes, probably a 1/16" bit, and #2 round-headed wood screws.

Once all the tuners are dry-fitted and aligned the way you want them, mark through those small holes for the fixing screws onto the wood., and drill them out for the fixing screws. You need those screws mount; they will hold the tuner fixed so it can't come loose and rotate when you try and tighten a string. Just be sure to have the tuning machines holes drilled exactly where you want them before you mark the fixing holes

Two cavities needed to be cut into the wood. One irregular cavity has to accept the bottom of the pickup (which is a sort of slightly rotated trapezoidal shape.). To get a rough idea for my first pass, I just put the pickup plate into its future position on the wood and quickly sketched around the underside of the pickup onto the wood beneath. Quick and dirty.

I cut it out by using a router with a 1" straight bit. I set the router depth to around 3/4" to be sure I wouldn't punch through the bottom of the blank. I sketched the shape of the hole I wanted to cut. Guitar makers use a template to guide the router, but I was too lazy to make a jig for just one use. I just drilled a starter hole to drop the router bit into and free-handed it from there. I ended up with a roughly-shaped cavity and it took a few correction passes to get right. But it fitted the pickup and any ugliness is covered by the chrome plate anyway.

The other hole you'll probably need (based on your design) is for the Volume and Tone Controls. I designed this one to be more regular and was it much easier to cut out. I used a 1" spade drill bit and drilled four overlapping holes, spaced to make a cutout 3-1/2" from end to end, with straight sides and rounded ends. Having access to a drill press is very handy for this step. Then I sliced out the non-overlapping areas of the remaining wood with a sharp chisel to make the sides of the cutout fairly smooth. Again, the cutout space doesn't need to be perfect because the edges are hidden by the plate covering it.

I had a local trophy/engraving shop make a blank cover plate, 4-1/2" x 1-1/2". I drilled out two 3/8" holes for the potentiometer ("pot") knobs and the four smaller holes for the fastening screws.

Again, my dimensions are just for example only. Make sure yours make sense for the control cavity you made. I encourage you to do yours differently if you want to try something different.

To lower the chance of radio interference (yes, that's a thing) with the electronic parts of the guitar, I lined the control cutout with some metallic-style duct tape I have laying around. This lining doesn't have to be a clean job; it won't show. Just be sure the line the sides and bottom of the cutout completely. If any foil sticks up above the surface of the guitar, slice it off with a box knife or a chisel.

Regular plastic duct tape won't work for this, but if you don't have any of the metal kind, don't stress. One solution is to glue a couple of thicknesses of regular kitchen tinfoil around the sides. Or you could easily build yours without this interference blocking and see how it sounds. You'll be able to go back later and retrofit it if interference turns out to be a problem where you are.

The nut is one part that I wasn't able to source so I made my own, out of a scrap piece of 3/4" aluminum angle stock from Lowes.

At the pickup, I measure the width of all six strings to be 2". So I needed to divide that 2" into 6 sections, centered on the top edge of the nut, with 1/4" extra space at each end.

I sawed off a 2-1/2" long piece and filed down the corners and rough edges. In the bottom edge I drilled and countersank three holes for the fasteners. I then did a little math and measured out six centered and equidistant string grooves in the top edge. I took great care and measured in millimeters to ensure the best, most accurate spacing.

Accurate? Well, close enough for DIY.

It was only later that I realized I could have placed my nut flat on top of the row of bridge saddles, and taken my measurements directly from them without resorting to a calculator at all. I suggest you do yours that way. Otherwise, the aluminum angle stock worked well.

I then slowly cut out each notch with a small, thin hacksaw. Do not go as deep with the notches as I did. Try cut each notch just deep enough so at least one-third the diameter of the string sticks up above the nut. The lighter gauge strings will need very shallow notches; the heavier strings will need (slightly) deeper notches.

On the chrome bridge plate, the strings come off the adjustable saddles about 3/8" above the top of the fretboard. This means that the nut should hold the strings about the same distance about the fretboard. Whatever you use for a nut, make sure the strings are held at least 1/4" above the fretboard. Three-eighths of an inch (3/8") to 1/2" would be better if you can get it.

Also--very important!--make sure that the nut is perpendicular to the strings when you drill the holes for its mounting screws. You need each string's vibrating length to be the same. Take the time to check this--the line for the nut must be at right angles to the centerline you drew earlier. This is where that centerline will come in very handy. Notice on the picture of my body blank, you can see my centerline and the two perpendicular lines that mark the location of the nut and the pickup bridge plate.

Mounting the pre-drilled finger board is straightforward, just sure you align it carefully. It must be flush against the nut, and centered lengthwise on the body beneath where the strings will be. Once you have the nut fastened in its place, perpendicular to the strings, just slide the fingerboard tight up against it. Make sure the fingerboard is centered underneath the strings and parallel to them. Holding it in position, drill 2 1/16" holes through the holes in two opposing corners of the acrylic fingerboard and screw in 2 screws at opposite corners of the acrylic, just to hold it in place. Make sure you drill straight down through the fretboard holes and down into the wood; don't drill at a slant if you can help it. Don't drill any more holes yet; it's possible you may need to reposition it later. If you got the pearloid underlay film, this is the time to position it also and drill through it

This is the most important step so take the time to get it right. "Measure twice, drill once" is our mantra here.

Look at the pickup bridge plate (PBP). Notice that each of the 6 individual saddles has a Philips head screw on the endplate that can move the individual saddles closer or further away from the nut. (See red oval on picture.) This allows that fine adjustment of the scale length I mentioned earlier.

Before you drill holes to mount the PBP, you need to set each of these 6 saddles roughly in the middle of its scope of travel. Don't obsess over where the middle is; these saddles can make a large adjustment later if you need it. Just get them all lined up as close to the middle of their range as you can before marking the position of the PBP.

Measure 23" from the centerline of the nut toward the PBP as precisely as you can. (If you opted for an alternate fretboard, use that fretboard's scale length instead.) Mark it, and draw a perpendicular line right on the wood, about 6" long so that the ends of the line stick out from underneath the PBP where you can see them. (See the red line in the picture.). Make sure the PBP is positioned so that where the strings will cross the saddles is as close as you can make it to the cross line marking your 23" mark.

When it's in position, mark the holes to drill using the holes in the four corners of the PBP. Remove the plate and drill out each corner's hole. These are fairly large wood screws so you'll need a pilot hole of 1/8" or so.

Once the holes are drilled, screw in two of them lightly at opposite corners of the PBP, just enough to hold it firmly in position temporarily. Notice that each individual saddle has a hole that goes down through the PBP. The strings are threaded through these holes from the back side of the guitar, up through the body, and over the saddles, to be fastened to their respective tuners. (See the red lines in the second picture.)

This arrangement is called "through-hole stringing" and means you'll need to drill a hole for each string completely through the body blank. Mark the wood through each of these six holes while the PBP is still firmly held in position. When you have those hole positions marked, you can remover the PBP to drill holes for the ferrules.

For these next operations, it's mulch better to use a drill press if you have one available.

The ferrules I used are 8.2mm in diameter, with a "lip" of 11mm, and a total length of 7.2mm. This made it a bit tricky since I don't have metric drill bits. I converted millimeters to English units as closely as I could.

First, use a 3/16" or 1/4" drill bit (no larger) to drill 6 holes (1 for each string to run) straight down through the body of the guitar. It's smart to stick a stretch of masking tape over that area of the back where the holes will emerge to keep the wood from splitting. Take care to drill as straight through the body as you can.

After the string holes are drilled, enlarge the holes to accept the ferrules. Flip the body blank over to see the new holes. Now, take a 5/16" bit and drill straight down into each hole, to a depth of 5/16" each. These will be slightly smaller than the diameter of the ferrules but you should be able to force them in. Don't install them now, however.

Finally, take a 7/16" bit and drill straight down into each hole to a depth of 1/8". These will allow the string-stopping ferules to be inserted flush into the body but stop them from sliding further up through the body once tension is put on the strings. The depth is not critical but the ferrules have a lip about 1mm thick to keep them from pulling through the body. These holes only have to be deep enough so that the lip sits inside the 7/16" hole, flush with, or slightly below, the surface of the body. Refer to the drawing to see the relationships.

Decide where the 1/4" output jack will be. This jack is where the instrument cable plugs into the guitar. I placed mine on the end to keep the cord out of my way, but no reason yours can't be on the controls plate or on the front side of the instrument. It just needs to be in a place where you can drill a hole into the control cavity to feed wires from the jack to the control pots. These jacks usually have a threaded shaft of 3/8" diameter that sticks out through the mounting plate and a washer and nut to fasten the jack to the mounting plate. The mounting plate I bought was slightly curved so I had to gently straighten it to fasten it to the end of my guitar.

However, you'll find that 1/4" jacks are somewhat wider at the other end, where the plug prongs are. This end is hidden inside the guitar and it can be of various dimensions, depending on what brand of 1/4" jack you buy. You'll have to measure yours to determine the size and depth of the hole to allow the jack to fit flush inside the body. A 1/2" bit drilled down to a depth of 3/4" might be adequate. Just make sure that the jack, mounted to the plate, will fit completely inside the guitar with the plate flush to the surface. See the picture above.

Now drill a hole from the pickup cavity through into the control cavity. It only needs to be large enough to allow the pickup's wires to fit though it. (If you've worked on electric guitars enough to be concerned about grounding the strings, don't worry. The PBP from Gitty is internally grounded to the strings. You're covered.)

At this point, you're done with shaping and drilling the body. You've drilled wire passages, and screw holes, and you've attached every part to your guitar body at some point.

Now, remove any pieces or parts still attached to the body, including the PBP, fretboard, nut, tuners, whatever. Pull it all off, it's time to make the guitar beautiful.

First, you'll probably want to sand it down to whatever level of smoothness you want. For the very finish-conscous, there are "filler" coatings that will fill in slight dips in the grain and present an extremely flat surface for finishing. I sanded mine down to 220-grit,. and finished it with a standard clear varnish. I didn't bother sanding and filling it down to ultimate smoothness. I liked the grain of my ash blank and wanted to highlight it.

The Internet is full of ideas for painting, spraying, finishing, oiling, staining, or otherwise embellishing your guitar. Now's the time to really express yourself and finish it however you want. When everything's dry and hard to the touch, come back and we'll turn that chunk of wood into a guitar.

You're back? Great. Now look at the pictures just above. They show the physical layout of the controls and a layout diagram showing how the controls and the output jack are positioned. Your mileage may vary of course, but my examples should help you to lay things out and start connecting the pieces. You can see that the guitar's signal comes from the pickup, through the control wiring, then on toward the output jack and finally, out to your amplifier.

A Short Digression On The Electronics Of It All (TL;DR? Skip down to "Wiring" below)

The signal comes from the pickup over the signal wire (white) and the ground wire (black). The potentiometers ("pots") are wired as variable resistors. As you turn the Volume knob count-clockwise, the resistance in the pot rises and rises until the resistance is high enough to cut off the guitar's signal completely. You and I would say that the guitar is "turned down." Turn it all the way in the opposite direction and the resistance gets very close to zero, and the guitar signal gets very loud. And that's how the Volume knob works, along with every other volume knob you've ever turned.

The Tone knob works the same way, but with a twist. There is a capacitor connected between the Volume knob (where the signal comes in) and the wiper (center contact) of the Tone knob. The capacitor makes the Tone knob behave differently. As the Tone pot is turned, the capacitor limits which frequencies are allowed through.

Remember, the signal wants to divide itself equally between the two knobs. This means the capacitor will "see" exactly the same signal as the Volume knob.

But the capacitor works in tandem with the Tone pot's resistance in an interesting way. As you turn the Tone pot up, it starts resisting only the higher treble frequencies. They can't get through to the Tone pot so they pass on through the Volume pot and out the jack. Meanwhile, the lower frequencies are allowed to pass through the Tone pot, and they go straight through to ground where they disappear before they can leave the guitar. This lets the Tone knob control whether the guitar sounds sharp and distinct, or has a mellower jazz sound.

Q: Wait, what's Ground?

A: The signal from the guitar's pickup is a very small varying voltage that can range from 50 millivolts (thousandths of a volt) to 250 millivolts. But even that tiny amount of voltage has to be relative to some point. As in: "50mV from where?"

We call that common reference point "the Ground" or just ground. You can think of Ground as zero (0) volts, the place all other voltages are measured from. The whole signal chain uses the same agreed-upon zero point. The main point to remember here is that if you any send part of a signal to ground, it disappears.

Wiring

I won't cover basic soldering technique here; there are many good tutorials on the web. But you must have basic soldering skills to pull this off.

As a construction tip, I believe the best practice is to get all the parts and wires connected up and crimped properly first. Next, do a final once-over to make sure the conn actions are all right. Finally, solder all the connection points.

You should have the pots already mounted to your control panel, and it should be turned over to expose the contacts of the pots. On your left as you look at it should the the Volume knob, with the bottom of the Tone knob to your right.

Also, lay the output jack next to the hole you drilled, where it will fit inside the body. You'll need to wire it up at this time as well.

After you cut each of your connecting wires mentioned below, strip about 3/8" from both ends of each wire. My lengths are only suggestions; feel free to adjust the suggested lengths to fit your project.

All directions below refer to the layout diagram at the top of this step. Print it out to use as a reference.

Important: In the drawing above, the jack has two contacts labeled "T" and "S". "T" identifies the TIP (or signal) contact, and "S" marks the SLEEVE (or ground) contact. The sleeve is the lining on the inside of the jack, which is touched only by the barrel of the cable's 1/4" plug when it's plugged in. The tip of the cable only touches the "Tip" contact; it shouldn't touch the sleeve at any time except when plugging the cable in.

Okay? Start wiring!

-- Find the capacitor (or "cap") and bend its leads so that it will fit nicely between the center contact of the Tone knob and the lower contact of the Volume pot. It's perfectly okay to snip off any excess length from the cap leads to make the cap fit neatly between the two knobs.

-- Find the white wire from your pickup ands connect it to the lower contact of the Volume pot.

-- Find the black wire from your pickup and connect it to the lower contact of the Tone pot.

-- Connect a 1-1/2" piece of black wire to the lower contact of the Tone pot. Make sure the other end is long enough to be stretchy easily to the back of the Tone pot's casing, where it will later be soldered. (Before you solder, sand a spot on the case with 60-grit sandpaper to roughen off the metal; the solder won't stick otherwise.)

-- Connect a 3" piece of black wire one end to the lower contact of the Tone pot and the other end to the upper contact of the Volume pot.

-- Connect a 1-1/2" piece of black wire to the upper contact of the Volume pot. Make sure the other end is long enough to be soldered to the back of the Volume pot's casing, where it will later be soldered. Again, sand a rough spot on the case so the solder has something to stick to.

-- Connect a 10" - 12" piece of white wire to the Volume pot's center terminal, the wiper. Connect the other end to the output jack's "tip" terminal.

-- Connect a 10" - 12" piece of black wire to the upper contact of the Volume pot. Connect the other end of that black wire to the output jack's "sleeve" terminal.

-- Check your work carefully against the drawing to ensure that all connections are correct and crimped onto their contacts.

-- Solder all connections together.

Once the electronics are soldered, but before you screw down the control cover, it's time to test the wiring. You won't need strings for this. Just plug a guitar cable into the guitar's jack, and into an amp at the other end.

-- Turn the amp on, with a low volume setting.

-- Turn the guitar's Volume knob fully counter-clockwise (turned down.).

-- Take a small screwdriver with a plastic handle and tap lightly on the pickup. Its pole pieces are magnets, so they'll attract the screwdriver slightly. As you slowly turn up the Volume knob on the guitar, you should begin to be able to hear that tapping sound coming out of the amp.

-- Turn the Volume up or down, and the tapping should get louder or softer.

Can you hear it? Great, you're ready for Final Assembly. If not, drop down to the Troubleshooting section for some tips to locating the problem.

This is the fun part where you attach all the pieces. When you're done with this step you'll have a working lap steel guitar.

-- Attach the output jack to its mounting plate and screw the plate to the body.

-- Attach your control plate with the knobs' side up.

-- Attach the tuners. Remember that there are left side tuners and right side tuners. Take care to get them on the correct sides. Remember to install the small "fixing" screws on each tuner.

-- Attach the nut into its pre-drilled location.

-- Attach the fretboard to its pre-drilled location. Remember to slide the underlay underneath it before you fasten it down. I found #2 screws worked well. Tighten them down firmly but lightly; you don't want to crack the acrylic with too much pressure.

-- Attach the pickup/bridge plate (PBP). When it is in position you should be able to look down and see light through the string holes you drilled previously.

-- Turn it over and mount the six ferrules in the holes you drilled. You can push to get them started but you may to tap them lightly with a hammer to seat them completely. If they really don't want to go in, insert the 5/16" bit into each hole and just rock it very slightly once to enlarge the hole. Be very gentle here. If you gouge out the hole too much, you'll have to glue the ferrules in place. It's much better to have them held in by friction with the wood.

What have you forgotten? Nothing? Then string it up and play!

No Sound At All?

Hoffman's Law: "If everything is connected right, it'll work." That may not be a comfort right now, but it is absolutely a true statement.

I'll assume you know your amp and your instrument cord are both good and the cable is firmly plugged in at both ends. Also, make sure your new guitar's volume pot is turned up.

No sound at all means something is connected where it shouldn't be, or something is not connected where it should be. You need to go over all of the wiring very carefully to make sure all the wiring matches the instructions.

While the guitar is plugged in, take a chopstick and use it to tug and pull gently on each and every wire. Don't use a pencil for this. The pencil lead and the metal band around the eraser both conduct electricity. Either one might make an inadvertent connection and mislead you. If you tap on something and hear any crackle, or an intermittent guitar sound coming out of the amp, you've located a bad connection.

Run down all the wiring connected to that point and maker sure it's correct. If it is, you can try to re-flow the solder at that point to re-establish a strong connection will all the wires terminating there.

Take a multimeter and check continuity of all the ground wires. Any ground connection ( i.e., any black wire's terminals) must have continuity with every other ground point. If you find a ground point without continuity with all the other grounds, that's a problem. Fix it.

Unplug the cable from the amp Touch one multimeter lead to the center contact of the Volume pot, and the other multimeter lead to the TIP of the guitar cable that was just plugged into the amp. There must be continuity. Do the same check between the SLEEVE of the cable plug, and any ground point in the control wiring. That will verify the output jack is wired correctly. Don't forget to plug the cable back into the amp to continue troubleshooting.

Check the resistance of your volume pot between the lower contact and the wiper, the center contact. (It takes three hands for this step.) You should see varying resistances as you turn the knob, from near zero up to the neighborhood of 250K. (If you only measure a high of, say, 225K, don't worry about it--that's not a problem.)

Do the same check on your Tone pot, although it's not likely to be a problem. It's good to check everything.

Hums, Crackles, and Pops

If you have a hum, it's nearly certain that you have a bad ground connection somewhere, so concentrate your efforts on the black wires (assuming you took my color selections seriously.)

If you can hear the guitar sounding but you also have extra noises like static or pops, that's probably a bad solder connection. Use a chopstick as described above to try to identify the bad joint. When you push on the bad connection, it will likely make the noise each time you tap it.

It's also possible that the sounds might be coming from your amp. Always test the guitar with a different amp to rule that out.