1950s Alamo Embassy Lap Steel Electric Guitar
Alamo guitars were built in Texas and were fairly basic in their construction and design. This one is probably mid-late '50s and has a simple, no-frills setup and looks reminiscent of lap steels made 10 years its senior. Interestingly, the company chose to put the tone control closer to the playing hand than the volume control. But who am I to judge? I'm not a steel player by any means.
It appears to be made from a solid hunk of birch (or similar) and has a neat, routed-off edge around the lower part of the body. It has an acrylic "fretboard," single coil pickup, and a simple tone/volume control setup. Ancel cleaned it up and replaced the input jack (already a replacement) with a good-quality Switchcraft one. I imagine when this was first made it probably had a hard-wired cable installed.
The single-coil pickup uses a blade polepiece with a lowered cutout for the B string. This means it suits 4-wound, 2-plain, vintage-style stringing the best and fortunately if you're a fan of flatwound or semi-flattened strings on steel, those sets mostly come with wound G strings so you're good to go. It's currently wearing something like 52w-12 with a wound G and it's sounding great tuned to open E.
Specs coming shortly!
Condition notes: everything is original save the jack and the tuners. The tuners are brand-new Kluson-style Gotohs and they're replacing some funktastic original Klusons that were on their way out. There's mild wear and tear throughout the finish but overall it looks nice.
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