Chords for Martin Harley: how to convert an acoustic guitar for lap steel or slide

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_ [Dm] _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _
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_ [F] _ _ _ [D] _ _ _ _
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_ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _ [D] _
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_ _ _ Well, this [N] fine instrument _ originated somewhere in Japan, I would guess somewhere in the 70s
and _ it was my first attempt to make a lap style guitar.
_ _ The thing that makes this guitar different from a regular guitar is pretty straight forward. _
The original nut has been taken off the end here.
It's probably sitting around somewhere actually.
_ _ When it was made it would have had this nut sitting at the end of the fretboard to guide
the strings down the fretboard. _ _ _ _ _
This section here would have been quite a lot lower to keep the strings close to the
fret so you can play it this way around with your fingers as you would for a regular guitar.
What I did, _ _ because I wanted to play across my lap, is take those original sections out
and I just bought some bone blanks which you can probably get pretty easily online now
and just cut them to size.
You can see I have [A] not _ been trained as a luthier [Eb] at any point and it's a real kind of to do
the job _ [Ab] kind of conversion.
So if you're thinking about getting your priceless Gibson or Taylor and converting it into a
lap steel maybe don't take my advice about everything.
So I just knocked the old nut off, put this in, _ vaguely gauged the kind of space I wanted
_ [D] the strings to be, _ put this razor in here, strung it up, tuned it up and hoped it wouldn't
snap in half, which it didn't.
So _ I'd say one of the good things if you want to do a cheap and cheerful _ acoustic lap slide
conversion, 12 strings _ are usually quite good things to start with.
Quite often because there's so much tension on the neck from a 12 string, [Bb] necks often
bend or the back of the body often starts to raise up and it doesn't make it a very
playable and usable instrument.
But it makes it a great donor as a slide guitar because the neck is wider and the body is
actually built to take quite a lot of tension.
One of the things that you _ would probably want to do if you're converting a guitar is
change the gauge of the strings to be slightly heavier.
_ _ Personally I use these John Pierce Weissenborn strings that start at about 60 on the bottom
[N] and about 15 on the top, which is obviously not a gauge that you would use on your regular
guitar unless you had the biggest, strongest hands in the world.
_ _ _ So yeah, that's going to give a lot more body to the sound.
It's going to give you more tension on the strings and your intention by having the strings
up this high, [D] which you can probably see if I_
You know, the strings are set way, way high. _ _
When you're playing with a slide, _ [Db] you're trying to avoid [Dm] this happening.
Trying to get a nice, clean, _ [G] _ _ uncluttered sound.
So the higher the action, the [Eb] less likely you're of that [Dm] unwanted _
_ [D] _ _ _ rattles and clangs. _
[A] But yeah, [E] I mean, if you're looking at starting to play slide guitar and you want to try something
out, I mean you really can pick up old twisted neck guitars for next to nothing.
I mean, car boot sales, junk shops, just [N] even eBay. _ _
And the tools you need to do it are fairly _ straightforward.
You know, something to knock this nut off.
The original nut off, usually just a piece of wood and a little hammer, a little tap
will get it loosened up.
This is just bone.
I've glued it on with _ _ EvoStick.
_ And that's generally worked for me. _
And I _ _ might be going into all of this a bit too much for one shot, but these bone parts
_ probably won't come to fit exactly in the gap [Eb] that's on your guitar.
It probably is [A] what I prepared earlier.
[Abm] _
[B] Yeah, you're probably going to _ find that when you buy a blank, it could be as thick as that.
But I found the bone one sounded really good.
So what you're trying to do is make that fit into there. _
_ _ And you know, I don't have a workshop at home.
I'm _ in the kitchen sanding it down.
So I found the best way to get it down to size is get a big sheet of fairly coarse sandpaper,
put it on a totally flat surface and just sand it down bit by bit until it fits in your slot there.
_ You don't really particularly need always to _ cut grooves for the strings to go over.
They _ sometimes can just settle on their own.
But if they do need a little bit of guidance, _ work out what the spacing is that you want,
make a little nick in the top of these, _ top of the bridge part here, maybe with a Stanley knife.
And then you can use fret files, very thin files, just try and get that _ little notch to the right size.
You definitely need to do that up here at the nut end.
_ You'll see _ these tuning pegs rolled the wrong way because they were _ cheap from somewhere, I think.
You can see that [G] to get the string to sit where you want to,
you really need to file down the appropriate _ size,
taking care that all the [A] strings come up to the same [D] height.
If you [G] cut one in too low, [Ebm] you'll find that string might rattle
[Gm] when you're covering all the strings with [D] the slide. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ Yeah, in a [G] nutshell, _ that's what differs _ on this guitar from a regular guitar,
is that the action has been raised up to about _ [F] 5 or 6mm by using a nut and a new saddle piece. _ _ _ _