sipsey river lapsteels

[wolvoboy]

anyone seen one of these Sipsey River Lapsteels before,very unusual design and thay soud fantastic.




I dont play lapstyle but i would if i could get one of these.

wolvoboy

[Deleted]

Not only a cool steel but the playing and tone are great as well! I agree on the "fantastic" sound.

[melp]

Hi Wolvoboy,

Thanks for posting this, your timing is just perfect! I have just started learning lap style, thanks to a visit from Growler and his Wiessenborn, and I have nearly, almost, well mostly finished my first building project, a cigarbox. So was thinking what I would do with the "insurance wood" that was left over.

I enjoyed the building project so wanted to do something else. The Sipsey river lapsteels have given me some food for thought, in the "why does a lap steel need to be guitar shaped" direction.

I have been reading and thinking about Oud's and Loot's and double string courses and all that.

Building, in my case hacking away at bits of wood, is fun, but its a lot of effort so what's the point of building something that you could buy cheaper and probably better. But building something that is really unique, hmmm. The Sipsey construction should be strong enough.

So maybe I will take a step back and think about something with lot's of strings, double courses and, potentially, multiple scales.

Thanks!

Mel

[Deleted]

hey Guys, I'm thrilled that you have found the Sipsey River Steels. I'd love to answer any questions you may have concerning them, Thanks for the kind comments, and Mel, I'm glad that I was able to be a part of your thinking outside the box. we're all used to certain parameters as far as what we think guitars should look like. It's fun to break the rules! Jack Dudley (dontfret)
www.dontfretinstruments.com

[growler]

Great tone ....... I would like to know what tuning was being played ?, as far as looks are concerned, I like my instrument to like the traditional shape.

I could imagine Fred Flintstone playing one of these.

Regards
growler

[Deleted]

The tuning is as follows, DADDAD. at least that's what Fred told me.

[Steverb]

Hi Jack,
I noticed that a number of your excellent-looking instruments appear to have wooden top nuts. I wondered what the rationale for that is, rather than the usual bone or synthetic. Does it affect the tone on open strings or is it purely cosmetic? Is there any preference for the type of wood?

Steve

[Deleted]

Steve, My early builds have ebony nuts, and they worked great. I think my rationale for them was keeping the natural look of wood and also using a hard enough wood to promote good sustain. I'm an experimenter by nature, and experimenting has played a HUGE part in my creating the SRS's .I have since begun using brass nuts that lay in a saddle notch,and have found that it has greatly enhanced the sound of the instruments. I am also experimenting with brass saddles on the tailpiece end of the solid body models, and have found that they allow the guitar to sustain almost indefinitely. I tweak and re-tweak until I find the right combination of factors. I think I've found it!. I'll be uploading photo's of my newest builds soon to my website (www.dontfretinstruments.com) and I'll have some pictures of the newest brass tailpiece/saddle configuration. in the meantime, feel free to check out my facebook Sipsey River Steels for some new photos. Thanks for your question, and best regards, Jack

[Michael Messer]

Hi Jack,

Welcome to our forum. Your guitars look wonderful and from what I have heard via the Internet, they sound great too. Not a bad combination!

Can you tell us what gave you the idea to use those roots to make lap steel guitars? It is an unusual thing to do with them.

Thanks. Keep in touch.

Shine On
Michael.

[Deleted]

Here's the scoop on me. A little long winded, but it's how I started building instruments. I love this forum, so thanks for having me.
Meet the builder

As a kid, I was always looking for a piece of wood to whittle or drive a nail into. I was always tinkering and creating something, be it a birdhouse or a drum, a tree fort or a walking stick. I loved to experiment with wood, and that drive to create never ceased or even slowed as I grew older. 
 I grew up in a musical family. My parents played nightclubs in the northeastern US for a living, so it was natural at some point for me to pick up an instrument. I began playing bass at 11, and when I was about 17, I heard Jaco Pastorius for the first time on the Heavy Weather Album. At the time, I was playing a 1963 pre CBS Fender P-bass. I noticed that Jaco had plucked the frets out of his fender, and decided that I wanted to learn to play fretless bass. I subsequently plucked the frets out of my bass, (If I had known what that bass would be worth today, I NEVER would have done It.) and being that hindsight is 2020, and because I did not have another bass, I was forced to learn what the word intonation really meant. After hacking on the thing for awhile, (I’m sure those around me were being more than kind for not giving up on me) I began to develop my own style. In the meantime, I got married to my wonderful wife, and began to raise a family.
I never stopped playing, and to date, I have now been playing fretless bass for 30 years. I never lost the desire to create with wood, and because of the lack of quality fretless basses on the market, I began building my own instruments. What I began chiefly to satisfy myself has blossomed into a passion to build great fretless basses, in hopes that others will find as much pleasure playing them as I find building them.
 Now, concerning the Sipsey Steel, that was a complete accident. It all started in the summer of 2008. Me and my son threw the flat bottom boat in the back of my truck and decided to take a day trip to west Alabama. In our travels that day, we stopped at the Sipsey River and motored our way upstream. We were just out for a ride, and enjoying ourselves thoroughly. We came to an area where there were a lot of cypress trees, and a farmer had cut a path through a pile of cypress knees to allow his cows to reach the river to drink. I thought the knees looked pretty cool, and being who I am, figured that I could make something out of them later, so we threw a few in the boat. They laid around the shop for months, and I actually thought about throwing them out on several occasions. In the meantime, my brother kept asking me to build him a lap steel out of some walnut that I had in the shop, and on a whim, I decided to try and build one out of the cypress knees. The rest is history. My love for tinkering with wood coupled with my brother’s persistence to build him a lap steel, is responsible the Sipsey Steel.

As far as the percussion instruments are concerned, I began building them for our awesome percussionist dave DaveGowens (www.davegowens.com)
Everything that I build comes from a deep love for creating things from wood coupled with my love for music and sound. It’s my passion

[Michael Messer]

That's a great story. Thanks for sharing it with us and thank you for the kind words about the forum.

Shine On
Michael.

[Deleted]

hey Guys, I just shipped 2 SRS's to Guitar Player magazine this morning for review. Wish me luck!