1940s Regal-made Lap Steel Electric Guitar

While unmarked, this pearloid-covered lap steel is clearly the work of Regal (Chicago) to my eyes. It arrived completely original but needed a bunch of work to make it sing, so it's now a bit more of a mongrel.

It has a pickup housing/control plate in one from the factory but the pickup area where the coil and poles are had been punched-in and the pickup was damaged. Its tuner buttons were also all missing and it had a bad wiring harness and "wired-in" cable instead of a jack.

Work was longer than expected, thus, because I wound-up recutting the control plate/housing to accept a Telecaster-style bridge pickup and mounting plate and then had to wire a new harness, drill and fit a normal jack in the side, rout the control cavity a bit to fit the new jack, and make a shim to get the bridge taller. Then it just needed some tuner buttons and some setup work.

The result is a Fendery-stoned steel that's got killer retro looks and a clean, useful, familiar sound.