
An art-deco body style and pickup enclosure, plus multicolored fretboard dots, add pizzazz to this humble lap steel.
While the lap-steel guitar may have been surpassed in popularity by the pedal steel, this humble instrument makes a brief but meaningful appearance in Wu-Tang: An American Saga.
During a recent battle with a nasty stomach virus, I laid in bed for three days binging all sorts of shows and movies. One show I discovered was so interesting that I watched the whole series in a day: Wu-Tang: An American Saga. Peeps, I know I talk all the time about punk and blues and guitar-driven music in my column, but I really enjoy old hip-hop, and the Wu-Tang Clan is one of my favorites! The show is a semi-fictionalized story of the group and the collective members.
So, why am I bringing a hip-hop group into a guitar column? Well, because of a scene in one of the last episodes. The idea of the Wu-Tang Clan was primarily the vision of RZA, who produced most of the music and came up with so many of those raw beats. As RZA was thinking about a new direction for the group’s second album, he was shopping at a music store and stumbled upon a lap-steel guitar—a vintage Japanese Guyatone model. That scene highlights how RZA wanted to use more live instruments, and how he wanted to experiment with different sounds. I just love the idea that something like a vintage lap steel caught the imagination of RZA.
Lap steels had a relatively short run but were incredibly popular from the 1930s into the early 1950s, when larger, more sophisticated pedal-steel guitars became the rage. When you think about that era, the 1930s was the dawn of electrical amplification. With this came lap steels and (often) amplifier combos. This was also the same time Hawaiian music became incredibly popular. Soon, lap steels were found across a variety of genres, such as country, blues, gospel, and Western swing music.
“I just love the idea that something like a vintage lap steel caught the imagination of RZA.”
In the early days, there were so many models with interesting designs, flashy colors, and chrome galore. American manufacturers like Fender, Rickenbacker, and Gibson had fine lap-steel guitars. Japanese builders, mainly Teisco and Guyatone, were really cranking out varied and interesting lap steels and amps, and the two companies were primarily selling them to American service members stationed in Japan after World War II.
One of the very first Japanese lap steels, and one of the first products ever made by Teisco, is this one pictured here, built sometime around the late 1940s. I found this unnamed model in a super cool shop named the Tinicum Guitar Barn here in Pennsylvania. (The owner of the guitar barn is one of us—those who do the weird and interesting.)
And at the headstock, a logo fit for a baseball jersey.
During one of my trips to Japan, I met with some of the original Teisco employees and they remembered this model and, in particular, the logo. This original Teisco logo was also the same logo used on the uniforms of the Teisco baseball team. If you think about it, lap steels are kind of like a dressed-up 2"x4". But I’ve always marveled at how creative some of these instruments can get, often featuring art-deco touches and elaborate pickup covers. This Teisco represents some of the simple artistic touches that make lap steels just way cool. The pickup has some sort of “built-in” echo that makes for a wonderfully eerie sound. Paired with a boost or mild distortion, you can get sounds like you’d never get anywhere else.
Lap-steel guitars totally have a level of comfortability with us “regular” guitar players. These lap steels are flattened out like a flounder, but it’s a relatively easy instrument to play, and once you get the hang of the sliding steel bar in your left hand, you can create some strange and ethereal sounds straight out of Hawaii. Tune these darn things to just about any open chord and you’re halfway there.
I’m always talking about different guitars and how they can act as a new palette or a new brush to create music, and lap steels can act as that springboard to creative heights for all kinds of artists, like RZA and Wu-Tang. “Protect ya neck”!
- Hand Jive! Master the Fundamentals of Lap Steel ›
- DIY: Lap It Up ›
- Teisco’s Spectrum—A Rainbow of Switches and Weird Tone Selections ›
- Teisco’s Offering to the Early Electric Bass Race - Premier Guitar ›
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Fender American Ultra II Meteora Electric Guitar - Texas Tea, Ebony Fingerboard
Am Ultra II Meteora, Texas TeaTwo horns? It must be a Bison!
Our columnist links a few memories together to lead us to another obscure guitar model—one he remembers from his childhood and came to acquire as an adult.
Do you have any “click and stick” movies that you love? Like when you are channel surfing and see a movie that you’ve watched a lot, and then just watch it again? Lately, for me, it’s been the 2015 movie The Revenant. It’s a truly brutal tale of survival set in 1820s frontier America. My gosh, that movie just draws me in every time. There’s one scene where the main character goes flying off a cliff while riding a horse! He just sort of falls/rolls through a pine tree and lands in the snow … and he still survives! It’s crazy!
It makes me think about an old childhood friend who lived up the street from me. Jerry and his parents lived in an old house on their grandparents’ large plot of land. On one part of the land there was an old orchard filled with all types of fruit trees and pines, and I remember how we would climb to the top of the pines and just roll ourselves down the side, Revenant style! If you fell the right way, the branches would kind of gently let you down to the next, but if you hit it wrong and got in between the branches, you’d be wrecked. It’s like we enjoyed getting hurt, and, of course, when you’re young, you can snap right back. Ah, the days when pain really didn’t hurt. Now I wake up with injuries, for real.
“The action was way high and the fret ends were sharp. It was basically a painful affair.”
So why am I talking about my click-and-stick movie and stupid childhood escapades? Well, let’s get back to memories of my old friend Jerry. First, the house he lived in was so old that it had real wooden siding, but it hadn’t been painted in forever so the exterior took on a worn, faded, haunted house vibe. Second, his carpet was so tattered that it was being held together with duct tape. Lastly, I remember his dad had a cool, old electric guitar in the living room. His dad would let me play it sometimes, and I remember that it actually hurt to play! The action was way high and the fret ends were sharp. It was basically a painful affair. Not falling-out-of-a-tree painful, but as bad as it comes with guitars. It had the label “Conrad,” and young Frank didn’t realize that he’d be looking for that guitar again one day. I mean, it did have four pickups and lots of knobs and switches!
Made at the old Japanese Matsumoko factory in the ’60s, this Conrad Bison 1233 has four pickups and a 27" scale.
Years later, I would discover that his was a Conrad Bison guitar. The model came in a few different configurations, but the four-pickup design was designated as the 1233. Primarily featuring a lovely sunburst, these Bisons were made at the amazing old Matsumoku factory in Japan and were imported by the David Wexler Company that was based in Chicago. Matsumoku always had a good supply of aged wood, and many of the guitars made there are resonant and built well. The Bisons first appeared around 1966 and had a rather good run into the early ’70s.
Simple volume/tone knobs are paired with preset solo/rhythm switches that power alnico magnets. There’s an on/off switch for each pickup, and the sound really covers all the bases. Thumpy lows and crisp highs are all there. And, the pickups handle fuzz and distortion with ease. The Bisons also came in one- and two-pickup configurations with a normal scale, but the four-pickup ones have a longer, 27" scale, which is common for Matsumoku-made electrics.
So there it is: pain, survival, American frontier, Bison, haunted houses. It all sticks together like a duct-taped carpet. Click and stick, baby!
A 1000-watt speaker cabinet crafted for musicians who demand power and precision. Sunn Amps intends to reinvent the standard 4x12 configuration with the introduction of this new cabinet.
The Sunn Amps DoomBox is built to accommodate both guitar and bass, offering an impressive 1000-watt handling capacity—making it the first commercially available 4x12 cabinet with such high power handling. With four specially designed 12” drivers rated at 250 watts each, this cabinet provides clean, unrestrained sound levels that can maintain power integrity across all frequencies, ideal for high-volume performances.
Inspired and developed using feedback from artists and bands who rely on the depth of lower tunings and high volume genres, the DoomBox was engineered to meet the unique demands of professional musicians looking for a robust, high-efficiency cab that can translate the raw power of their sound without compromise.
Premium Craftsmanship and Materials
The Doom Box cabinet is crafted from solid finger-jointed Baltic Birch plywood, ensuring both durability and tonal clarity. Each cabinet is constructed by hand in the U.S.A. using original 1930s machinery, the DoomBox reflects Sunn’s historic commitment to quality, contrasting with some of the mass-produced, MDF-based cabinets on the market today. The cabinet’s aluminum basket, ferrite magnet, and custom Sunn weave Tolex with a custom grill design complete its professional-grade build.
Technical Specifications:
• Power Handling: 1000W
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• Dimensions: 29.25” X 30” X 14”
• Weight: 107 lbs
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With clear low-end punch, even sound response, and ample air movement, the Doom Box ensures that every note reaches the audience with clarity and power. This cabinet is a game-changer for musicians who need high-performance, road-ready equipment that enhances their unique sound.
Does the guitar’s design encourage sonic exploration more than sight reading?
A popular song between 1910 and 1920 would usually sell millions of copies of sheet music annually. The world population was roughly 25 percent of what it is today, so imagine those sales would be four or five times larger in an alternate-reality 2024. My father is 88, but even with his generation, friends and family would routinely gather around a piano and play and sing their way through a stack of songbooks. (This still happens at my dad’s house every time I’m there.)
Back in their day, recordings of music were a way to promote sheet music. Labels released recordings only after sheet-music sales slowed down on a particular song. That means that until recently, a large section of society not only knew how to read music well, but they did it often—not as often as we stare at our phones, but it was a primary part of home entertainment. By today’s standards, written music feels like a dead language. Music is probably the most common language on Earth, yet I bet it has the highest illiteracy rate.