1960s Harmony H165 Hawaiian Palm Pedals Conversion Guitar

Several things had to happen to get this monstrosity made.

First, my friend Rob is dabbling in palm pedals for his lap steels. He originally had the plastic, 3D-printed ones you see on this thing on a cheap, Chinese lap steel. I'd fit them for him last year. He then bought some nice, aluminum, rugged palm pedals and had me install those in his steel instead. I was given these plastic ones as "war loot."

Next, the following day a customer of mine traded-in this guitar that I had sold or traded to him for $100 or something like that a few years back. It's a mid-'60s Harmony H165 model -- solid mahogany throughout and somewhat-desirable among Harmony collectors -- but this one had a bad enough warp and twist in the neck that I had just set it up as a Hawaiian-style guitar and let it be.

Finally, I had a spare set of pulled decent flatwound strings and made a spare half-hour in my midnight workings to get this thrown together. I swapped the original (crud) saddle for a fretwire one, drilled-out my vintage extender nut so I could mount it more securely with a screw, and then fit the pedals to the top of the guitar. Some of the screws meet bracing under the top which helps stabilize it but I suppose one could also just put a thin patch of ply under the top to grab mounting screws for something like these.

The only reason this "palm pedals acoustic Hawaiian guitar lap steel convergence" works is because the palm pedals are plastic and thus very lightweight. It would probably sound pretty subdued with even the aluminum equivalent of these. I also used plain strings in the treble so as to avoid breaking strings when constantly bending them. I have it tuned DADF#AD (open D) and the pedals sharp the F# to a G and the A to a B, thus allowing IV chords in the same position as "root" with both pedals engaged.