The slide guitar virtuoso and musical healer takes PG through his live setup.
AJ Ghent’s uniquely inspired Singing Guitar has its roots in the Sacred Steel musical style and African-American gospel traditions that developed out of a group of Pentecostal churches across the South. Ghent comes from a long line of innovative players, including his father, Aubrey Ghent Sr., and grandfather, Henry Nelson. His great uncle Willie Eason is credited as the founder of the Sacred Steel rhythmic guitar style.Ghent invited John Bohlinger and the PG team to his soundcheck before his show at Nashville’s City Winery to talk through his rig and play some inspiring music on his lap and pedal steels.
Brought to you by D’Addario: https://ddar.io/wykyk-rr
and D’Addario XPND Pedalboard: https://www.daddario.com/XPNDRR
Guitars
Ghent keeps it simple on this current solo tour. His number one is this 6-string Asher custom model lap steel built to 25" scale. The neck-through-body is African okoume wood, from the Congo, similar to mahogany but lighter. The top is quilted maple and the fretboard is rosewood. There’s a Lindy Fralin Pure PAF in the bridge, and a Fralin hum-free P90 in the neck position, hidden under a humbucker cover. There’s also a LR Baggs acoustic Tune-o-matic-style bridge, with acoustic pickups under the saddles. A Bartolini acoustic magnetic blend circuit combines with a chicken head control knob to blend the acoustic with the other pickups. Ghent uses Rocky Mountain Slides Company slides, and Dunlop finger and thumb picks. The coveted Asher is strung with Asher Electro Hawaiian Lap Steel Strings.
This 6-string Jackson Maverick HD pedal steel guitar features two foot pedals and four knee levers. It’s based on the classic Sho-Bud Maverick. Ghent runs it straight into a Goodrich volume pedal then into his amp, sans effects. The Jackson is strung with either D’Addarios or Asher Electro Hawaiian strings, depending on what is handy.
Pedalboard
Ghent’s tone is really about the guitar and the amp, but he does have a modest pedalboard that includes an Eventide H90 and a Boss RC-5 Loop Station. He uses Lava Cable to connect the dots.
Amps
AJ runs his lap steel through his pedals then onto his AJ Ghent 12" Signature Edition Guitar Amplifier by Quilter Labs. The signature combo is stacked with a Celestion Copperback speaker.
For his pedal steel, Ghent plugs directly into his Milkman The Amp 100, which feeds a Quilter Labs BlockDock 15 1x15 extension cabinet.
Shop AJ Ghent's Rig
2-Quilter Labs Overdrive 202 Guitar Head
Quilter AJ Ghent 12" Signature Edition Guitar Amplifier
Quilter Labs BlockDock 12CB 1 x 12" Extension Cabinet
Boss RC-5 Loop Station Compact
Eventide H90 Harmonizer Multi-Effects Pedal
Quilter Labs BlockDock 15 1 x 15" Extension Cabinet
Celestion Copperback 12-inch 250-watt Guitar Amp Replacement Speaker
A sound designer decides to build an electric baritone lap steel out of discarded timber and leftover guitar parts.
Name: Paul Ridout
Location: Falmouth, Cornwall, United KingdomGuitar: Scrap Steel
I’ve spent almost a lifetime failing to play an instrument, and the guitar has mainly been my unfortunate target, despite spending most of the ’80s and early ’90s earning my crust as a synth programmer (sound designer in modern parlance). However, I’ve enjoyed building “sound-producing things.” At art college in the ’60s, I adapted various junk-shop acoustic guitars after reading about old bluesmen using 9-strings. Adding extra machine heads and experimenting with string combinations (octave pairs on the bottom three or unison pairs on the top) and string heights. Lap steel and an open tuning seemed, incorrectly, to be a possible direction for an incapable guitarist.
My interest in attempting to play waned until recently, when I discovered an article on the joys of building a lap steel from a scrap 2x4. Before I knew it, the world of self-build and all its variants had rekindled my desire. I wasn’t alone: There were other seemingly crazy individuals out there hacking all manner of unlikely objects into strange and beautiful instruments.
I decided to try my hand at a “scrap steel,” which led to a collection of adapted instruments, including 1/2- and 3/4-size electric “strats” converted to electric baritone ukulele and tenor guitars. One special conversion is a Washburn (Oscar Schmidt) steel-strung kid’s acoustic revamped as an electro-acoustic baritone ukulele with under-saddle and soundhole pickups wired to a stereo jack to give two separately controllable outputs.
During all of this, I was intrigued by the concept of an electric baritone lap steel, given that most of my creations lacked any bottom. Through research, I found such a thing didn’t exist commercially. So, I set about building one from scrap timbers and various electrical bits that were left over from earlier experiments. Some timber from a demolition dumpster, a Telecaster pickup switch, a Fender bass bridge cover, some leftover white-pearl scratchplate, a B.C. Rich humbucker, and a generic single-coil were just about all I needed. Tuned A–E–A–E–A–C# with a 27"-scale, she makes a wonderful racket. Needless to say, I still can’t play (solo or with others), but I do enjoy my noise.
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It's equipped with the company's Multibender and the onboard Easy-Shift Capo.
Hannover, Germany (June 26, 2019) -- Duesenberg lapsteel guitars have opened a new chapter in the history of horizontal guitars a few years ago. For the first time there were lapsteels like Duesenberg Pomona 6 and Fairytale on the scene which sport their own unique bender system for pedalsteel-like sounds and a built-in capodaster.
The third lapsteel of the house, the Alamo, has 2019 shown up on the steel guitar horizon. Like its two sisters, it is also equipped with the ingenious Multibender and the onboard Easy-Shift Capo. Its elegant body is made out of Korina, finished in a stunning Ebony, and the scale length is a long 648 mm. Together with the Duesenberg VintageTrouble pickups, classic Alnico single coils in neoclassical so-called Phonico covers, these specifications create a unique lapsteel sound. If desired, the Alamo can be crisp to biting, but also cool and elegant, thus providing a clear counterpoint to the more full-bodied sounding Pomona 6 and the Blues-to-Rock orientation of the Fairytale.
The Duesenberg Alamo is available in all Duesenberg stores and comes with the sturdy Duesenberg Custom Line Case.
For more information:
Duesenberg