Epiphone Electar Inspired by "1939" Century Lap Steel Outfit - Ebony Reviews

After replacing the strings with a heavier .013-.056 set, deepening the nut slots slightly with a file and removing the pickup cover, as recommended by other reviewers, this piece plays and sounds great.

The guitar has a quality look & feel, simple and functional. It's got a cool retro vibe with the circus tent knobs and simple shape. The tuners are better than expected for the price, not the best but they hold tension fine. It sounds excellent clean or distorted. I have not opened it up to look closely at the components and wiring, I'm sure it's more on the cheap side, but it sounds great and the controls feel solid.

This lap is just the ticket for the look and sound I sought after!

I've never been slide/steel player but I've always been interested. The price of the "Electar" was almost to the nickel the amount of a gift card that I got for Christmas, so I decided to give it a shot.

Honestly, lap steel guitars are pretty basic contraptions. Other than the cheap, plastic knobs on this thing - I can't find any significant advantages or differences between it and more expensive models. It's like Dustin Hoffman's character said in "Wag the Dog" - "... there's no difference between good flan and bad flan."

I've experimented with several tunings, as there seems to be no industry standard per se. Lately, I have experimented with an open E tuning. I have no real talent or skill just yet, but I have been able to make some music-like noise. I'm sure I'll get better as I can't possibly get any worse. Dogs howl and cats run, but I'm having a good time with this thing.

Basically a 2 X 4 with strings and a STRONG pickup. If I don't get significantly better in a reasonable amount of time I can always stick some wheels on it and take it to the skateboard park. Does Sweetwater sell kneepads and helmets?

My first (and continuing) impression of this instrument is "How pretty!" It is a fine looking piece, and it really resembles the original closely.It's well made, finished, and set up. It's nice that it comes with nonslip backing pads on it. I play on my lap, and sometimes they want to slide around. It came with protective plastic film all over to prevent scratches. It comes with a nice gig bag with a reasonable size pocket for picks, steel, tuner, cable, spare set of strings, etc. A previous comment said that the strings are unevenly spaced at the nut, and I recall a remark or two about the string notches in the nut being cut too small. The strings are evenly spaced when they're in the notches. The chromed angle steel nut has just tiny notches to hold the higher pitched plain strings in place. That works fine if you remember to seat the string on the notch. If you push it sideways near the nut, it will jump out easily. The larger wound strings sit in round notches cut to let them sit down in the nut so the tops of all strings are pretty well leveled. The stock strings it shipped with are about .011-.046", and they won't tune down to Open D as was mentioned. It can be played in Open E, but the bass string is still pretty slack. It turns out that the stock strings are PERFECT for High Bass G, standard Dobro tuning, GBDGBD low to high. Coming from a background of mostly playing bottleneck blues I've never played in this tuning, but half of it is the same as "Spanish Tuning" a.k.a. "Low Bass G," DGDGBD that's widely used in blues and rock. I'm finding stuff I like in it! You'll have to restring if you want to play the popular C6 tuning CEGACE. If you want to play in Open D you'll want to restring, and you'll want to spend a little time with fret files or needle files fitting the nut slots to the fatter bass strings. But if you're familiar with playing a dobro you're good to go right out of the box! If you want it set up with strings for a different tuning, I'll bet a phone call to Sweetwater could get that done for you before it ships. The "Epiphone 500B humbucking blade pickup" is a sealed rail type stacked coil Jazz Bass pickup, and it is PERFECT for this application! Don't worry about lacking treble with a bass guitar pickup, this thing sings sweetly in the upper registers! There is absolutely no need to change the pickup. If you're thinking of building your own lap steel, remember rail J-Bass pickups! One for a 5 string bass would be just what the doctor ordered for an 8-string! The hand rest over the pickup makes it look vintage, and I'm used to playing with one. Some want to palm mute, and if you do, just unscrew the hand rest and set it aside. Alas, my little Electar Tube 10 combo is out of commission due to a freak short from a badly done solder joint when it was built back in 2000 (it shorted the high voltage on the 6L6 to the heater circuit!)and I haven't got it completely sorted yet, but the repro Electar lap steel sounds terrific through my Epiphone Valve Junior combo, Crate VC-508, and most especially through the Fender Pawnshop Excelsior I bought new from Sweetwater! I generally prefer the tone switch on "DARK," it sounds smooth and sweet, but if you click it on "BRIGHT" you'll get all the treble and presence you can handle out of that big 15" speaker! Too late to make a long story short, but I love this guitar! You'll never find better, more personal customer service than you'll get from Sweetwater!

can you spend more money on a lap slide? No doubt. But why throw money away when this lap slide does it all. Im originally a Weissenborn player but bought this Electra to play in a blues and rockabilly band and I'm not disappointed. Plugged it in and went berserk playing along with my favorite bules artists. Buy it, you can't go wrong.

My first lap steel, It is everything I expected for this price range. Excellent tone! The stock strings seem to tune well to standard "G" dobro (GBDGBD). I found this very nice to start with for a beginner (me). I've played guitar for a lot of years and this tuning works for me right now from a guitarists view. I will probably change to thicker gage strings as many suggest. I saw online videos where the pickup was changed for more mid-range tone. I don't see any reason to have to do this. Through my amp, this stock pickup sounds rich and full with my favorite tone in the middle, which leaves room to go darker, or brighter as desired. Again, my first lap steel, but I love it. Works great for me! I may soon experiment with other tunings. C6 seems would need different string gages. These work well GBDGBD.

EPIPHONE REVIEW

String spacing is 3/8" between strings at the nut. Compared to several lap steels out there you will find this wide. I could be wrong but the narrow string spacing on a lot of lap steels might be accomdate a fender style Strat pickup. But we are not playing a Strat. With the wider spaced strings its esier to play single notes with the nose of your tone bar and also get your finger picks between the stings.

You will see some videos on YouTube of someone playing this guitar beautifully with an after market pickup. The pickup is fine there is no need to replace it. The controls work good. I have a few lap steel guitars. It has it"s own voice over my other ones. I like playing this on a lot.

First things first. Don"t even try to tune to something with the factory strings. They are way too light. Not fit for a lap steel at all. OK so now you know this just order better strings with the guitar. Like GHS C6 strings for Hawaiian or Country playing or GHS E tuning strings for anything else.

Yes the nut groove was not deep enough on one of my new strings to hold heavier strings it in place. Two swipes with a file to deepen the groove and that was taken care of. I suppose I could have run the file on all the stings but I did not. At least I did not have to replace the nut itself with better material. I saved $15 for lunch.

Take the pickup cover off and dispose of it with the strings. It"s for show only. Put the screws back in the holes so it looks nice. Now you will be able to rest your hand close to the strings and do plam muting.

The gig bag is nothing super. It is a bag. Keep the box. At some time I will get a better one.

One last thing. A Dunlop a heavier 920 tone bar works nice tone and vibrato. I also have used a long glass slide. There is no rule your bar has to be steel.

A few minor tweaks and you have a really nice lap steel guitar.

Guitar sounds good. I made some modifications to mine. I filed the point off of the tone knob for more comfortable tone swells. My ghs strings would not fit through the bridge holes when I got to the 3rd string. I used metric calipers to measure the string wraps and drilled the holes 0.02 mm bigger. I also took the pickup cover off. It was in my way. The strings that come on it are too light. Get the bigger set to restring it if you get one. Now I have it set up for me and I love it. Stays in tune. Sounds great. No electronic issues.

So I bought this lap steel as the latest instrument for me to learn. When I'm learning a new instrument -- tone is essential to my continued enthusiasm. Unless you're going for a tone that's similar to Hawaiian or country pedal steel I suggest changing the strings. This lap steel comes with steel strings stock. I did some research and learned that changing them to nickel wound strings will give this lap steel a much warmer tone. I also removed the pickup cover so that I could more easily use palm muting. I also found that using a glass slide versus a stainless steel slide helps to improve tone. Finally, since I play more rock slide like Zeppelin -- I run this lap steel thru an Ibanez Tube Screamer pedal and Orange Crush 35 watt amp. Have fun! This is a decent entry level lap steel once you change the strings and dial in the tone further with amp and effects.

Nice little guitar for the money. They have retained the scale of the antique ones which is important. I have converted it to an 8 string to take on the road and keep my original Electars safe. The supplied pickup is wide enough to work with 8 strings, which is good. Pickup does not have the power of the originals but can make up for that with amp settings.

Saved my bacon when I couldn't afford to ship the triple neck Fender for an Austin music festival! The nut isn't firnedly for larger gauge strings, so you'll either need to get the nut filed (and likely the bridge) to fit. I made a makeshift string retainer bar out of a push rod and tied it on tight with 550 cord. That actually made the string tension higher, much to my liking. Now that I'm back home, I'll install a real string retainer bar. I also switched the pots' positions in order to reach the tone knob for the boowah sound. I can't wait to put in a 1M linear pot and a 47 orange drop cap for an even honkier boowah! Perhaps a string-through pickup in the future? Maybe not, the stock pickup sounds great! Clean and chimey, or loud and proud--both ways sound great.

I opened the box with trembling hands. The cheap Chinese strings need a trash can. New strings wouldn't stay in position on the nut when attempting to tune to open D. A week in the shop and $15 later it plays just ok. Base strings overpower the top strings to the point of madness. Not at all impressed with this excuse for a Epiphone. Should have gone for the Gretsch or the Pevy. Avoid the Epiphone at all costs.

After opening the box and giving it the once over I immediately discovered the cover over the bridge wasn't even tight. Tried to change the strings and the grooves were so shallow the strings wouldn't stay secured to the nut. I have to go to the hardware store and get a file to deepen the grooves. Do not buy this guitar if you don't want to work on it first to bring it into playing condition. Very dissapointed. If I lived in the US I'd send it back. Sweetwater, you should start vetting your instruments a little closer.