1940s National Princess Lap Steel Electric Guitar (w/Benders)

My friend Rob has been chewing through lap steels and this is his most recent purchase. It's an early-'40s National Princess and the reason for the buy was because this one looks great, it has the brand's excellent string-through pickup, and it has enough "rear deck" behind the bridge to fit string benders for the G&B strings (if it were in standard tuning).

To make it all work, however, I needed to block-in the area where the benders would go, tidy-it-up, rewire it (new simplified 1-volume configuration and a modern-style jack out the side), fit the benders, and then adjust it all to work nicely. Someone had replaced the nut some time back and I replaced the funky original tuners with some modern ones hidden under the old tuner covers.

The resulting instrument plays nicely, sounds excellent, and looks killer.