Building a Duesenberg-style lap steel

[Steve Pavey]

I'm hoping to start building a lap steel, using a Duesenberg bridge, and possibly a capo system similar to the one on the Fairytale. So far I have some fairly rudimentary drawings in Fusion360, and plenty of mahogany to laminate the body blank, which I'll shape on a cnc router.

I'm not sure about the string spacing and width of the fingerboard - I see the specs of the Fairytale say it's 65mm at the nut - am I correct that it is parallel all the way? How does that affect the choice of pickup, given that most are intended for conventional guitars so not as wide?

So advice on suitable pick-ups (two would be nice if possible) would be very welcome. Thanks.

[Karlis Abolins]

Regardless of the string spacing at the nut, Your bridge spacing depends on the pole spacing of your pickup(s). There are two "standard" pickup spacings: Fender and Les Paul. If you plan to use the Duesenberg bender, the string spacing of the bender controls your choice of pickups. I went through all of these considerations when I built my "doozietone".

Karlis

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[Steve Pavey]

Thanks. That's a really nice guitar, and more or less exactly what I have in mind. Can you measure the width of the Multibender bridge, ie the distance the rollers are apart from the lowest to highest string? And also could you say what pickups you have fitted?
By the way, before joining the other day I have read most of the Duesenberg-related threads here, and the information you have provided to others on your build is invaluable - thanks.

Edit - Looking more closely, I think you may have the Certano bender fitted, not the Duesenberg. So it may be that you don't have the latter to hand to be able to measure.

[Karlis Abolins]

I replaced the Certano bender with the Duesenberg bender because I need a lower on my setup. The Certano bender is a good bender but it only does raises. I measured my Duesenberg bender bridge. The distance from the 1st string to the 6th string is approximately 5.35 centimeters (~2 3/32 inches). My pickups are Lollar PAF Imperials with F spacing (Fender). On the Lollar pickups, the spacing for the F spacing pickups from the 1st pole piece to the 6th pole piece is 2 1/16 inches according to their website. With the Duesenberg bender, you should have a lot of choices as long as you stick with F spacing.

Karlis

[Steve Pavey]

Thats great info, thanks. I’m slowly getting my head round this, and I can now start to add the details into Fusion. I’m thinking of making a body from some redwood first as a dummy run to make sure the cnc does what I want it to, but Ive got a couple of 1” mahogany boards which I’ll laminate for the real thing.
Many thanks.

[Steve Pavey]

I’ve finally made a start by planing up a couple of boards and laminating them with epoxy, all aided by the use of some home made clamps. Had to fire up the Chinese diesel heater to make sure the temperature was maintained for the day so the epoxy would cure. I’ve also ordered a Duesenberg multibender bridge and a couple of Seymour Duncan humbuckers, on the basis that the huge expense would give me the incentive to continue progress. I also need them to make some final decisions on dimensions.
The drawings I’ve been working on in Fusion 360 are a bit of a mess at the moment - not being an expert means that some attempts at extruding and chamfering have failed for no apparent reason. When I get round to tidying them up I’ll post them in the files thread in case anyone else wants to make use of them.

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[Steve Pavey]

Having not used my CNC router for some time it was a bit of a challenge trying to re-learn everything so I didn't crash it. Fusion is also a bit of a challenge, especially with curved shapes, but getting there slowly, starting with templates of the body and head in 10mm ply, (and a head template in 3mm acrylic done on the laser cutter).
Next to do is a jig - a piece of ply with the body shape cut out of it so I can turn the stock over to machine the back and the front.

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[Steve Pavey]

I've done most of the machining on the softwood dummy version. The blank was located on the bed of the CNC with a plywood template, as it needs to be machined on both sides - the template ensures that everything matches up. Softwood is horrible to machine on the cnc, but it managed to get a pretty good finish after the final smoothing cut. The mahogany will be much nicer to machine. Pics show (1)the profile done from the back side, and control pot cavity being machined, (2)the top face of the head getting the final smoothing after roughing out, and (3)the underside of the head (which may need a bit more machining so the tuners sit down flush).

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[Michael Grotenhuis]

Hi All,

I just joined the forum, as my lovely wife has decided to take it upon herself to build me a lap steel based on the Duesenberg Fairytale CNC plans created for this YouTube video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyuJ4g2GKMw

Since you were discussing the nut width, may I ask what either of you are using for a nut? The creator never finished and assembled his, and I've not had any luck yet finding a 65mm nut on the web.

Thanks in advance!

Mike

[Karlis Abolins]

Michael, I machined the nut that I use out of 6061 aluminum. I use 2mm stainless rod for the axle. I machined the gauged rollers using 1/2 inch diameter brass rod.

Karlis

[Steve Pavey]

I plan on making my own as I have some workshop facilities. There's one pictured in this thread - viewtopic.php?t=412962 which is more or less what I have in mind. The last guitar I made (a Les Paul style) I made a nut from bone with files and glasspaper, and it was a smelly process.

I too got the same plans, but they proved to be disappointing because the file format (.step) was not really suitable for editing (I wanted to change some details, particularly the back of the head, which is a very ugly shape imo). I ended up tracing the shape from an image straight into Fusion 360 - in the process I decided that the Alamo was a more interesting shape than the Fairytale so went with that instead. (All the most important dimensions are the same on both models though - scale length, fretboard width etc).
So far I've completed cutting out the body shape in both my softwood test piece and the actual mahogany version. The test piece has been very useful in making sure all the settings are correct for the CNC before committing to the real thing.
As I hoped for, the finish from the machine on mahogany is very good. I also cut out the cover from a piece of Curly Blackbutt I brought back from Australia a year ago - lots of ripple figure, and I'll use another piece for the head veneer.

The test model has proved very useful in setting up the CNC to make sure I didn't mess up the mahogany blank, although I'm not sure what to do with it now! Screw it to the workshop wall as an ornament maybe..

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