Workshop: Sitar-Saddles Lap Steel

My buddy Ivan gave me a set of these no-longer-produced (from what I've gleaned) Telecaster-style saddles made by the German firm EYB.

He'd also brought-in (and sold) that wild guitar-sarod hybrid recently and I've done a fair amount of listening to Debashish Bhattacharya in my time, so slide+sitar sound was on my brain anyhow.

I decided to fit them to this absolute catastrophe of a guitar -- a warped-neck, bottom-of-the-barrel Chinese-make "Strat copy" -- and fit a tall nut so it could be a Hawaiian-style slide instrument with sitar twang.

I didn't stop there, however. I wanted to get that drone-string sound going and I scratched my head for a second but then thought about how lovely and chimey my Nashville-strung (also a junker but with a good neck) Strat-copy guitar sounds.

So -- sitar-sound saddles, Nashville (re-entrant) stringing, and an open E tuning -- EBEG#BE low to high (the first "low" 4 are an octave above normal tuning) -- yields what you hear in the video. I'm playing with fingerpicks and using a Hawaiian-style bar. I'm only using the lowest E and then the high-side BE strings for playing-on and using the BEG# middle strings as drones that I pick on the off-beat.

I might play with the stringing idea a bit more but I'm liking what I'm getting with it so far. I wouldn't mind having it strung all in roots and fifths to make it easier to record with when I just want to drone-around in different keys as a modal instrument, though.