December 2007
You will know it when you hear it; the beautiful, smooth sound of a slide guitar. Most of all in country music, but also in many other styles. Unable to afford one, and of course because I love making things, I decided to build my own.
This beast has been over two years in the making, and is now a complete redesign of my original attempt, put together as it was in an afternoon from salvaged guitar parts and MDF. What has taken by far the most amount of time is designing a reliable string bending mechanism. The current incarnation is composed of Meccano, extruded aluminium, and hardware purchased at my local ALDI. Precision engineering is this thus definitely not. However it does work, and keeps its tune pretty well.
The legs have been salvage from an old card table (the sort which is roughly 1m square and is covered with green cloth), and possess a nice locking mechanism. In addition to the main guitar table and pedal base, the instrument features a folding stool which forms part of the case when packed away.
Playing the pedal steel guitar