Just ordered one of these - Revelation lap-steel content

JCA2550

Tried one of these out at Electrohill in Palmers Green the other day and couldn't resist ordering one in "natural"

http://www.revelationguitars.co.uk/rlsdlx/

Not bad for a hundred and fifty quid?

The build quality is pretty decent, hardware is more than good enough (actually seems to be rather high quality) and it sports a rather feisty Alan Entwhistle Filter-Tron style pickup. I'll post more when it's turned up and I've given it a good seeing to.

OilCityPickups

Interesting, the 'Alan Entwhistle Filter-Tron' appears to be identical to these Artec units

clarke_111

Hey, I have one of these in 'honeyburst'. Its a great little guitar, tone is good for the price, I am generally more of a 'neck-pickup-kinda-guy' but with the tone pot rolled off this gets close and warms up nicely whilst retaining the clarity,

Obv playability/action etc aren't such an issue on a lapper and therefore the price can be more competitive, but I must say this was a bargain at £150.

I tend to play blues based stuff, medium gain - it works great.

Let us know how you get on with yours!

Chris

JCA2550

Will do. It turned up today so I'll try to share some pics and thoughts asap

english_bob

I don't have that one, but I do have a lap steel (mine's a Recording King).

Lap steel is familiar enough to be able to get going fairly quickly, but very different in terms of what can be done compared to regular "spanish" guitar, so you really need to think about what you play if you want to play on a song alongside a band. When you play with the bar slanted you can only really get two or maybe three notes at a time, so you need to take a very different approach. Be careful with muting too- it's very easy to end up with stray notes ringing, which will sound particularly bad when you play slants.

I highly recommend getting yourself a set of thumb and finger picks- feels a little weird and clumsy to begin with if you're not used to playing wearing them, but much louder, brighter tone than fingertips. You can- as with any guitar- affect tone significantly by changing the position of your picking hand, even if there's only one pickup. Picking over where the neck pickup would be gives a rounder, warmer sound than picking directly over the bridge pickup.

It's worth experimenting with different open tunings to find one that works for you- for blues and rock open D or G is probably a good choice, whereas for country or hawaiian stuff C6 is popular. C6 is very high compared to open D or G, so be careful if you're tuning up the heavy strings used for those tunings. I bent the bridge on my RK!

Oh, and you have to play some blues with a fuzz pedal. Good fun.