console steel guitar

This type of instrument was created when players in the late 1940s needed to play in different keys and with different chords than the lap steel afforded. To do this, they added additional necks (each tuned differently with additional strings) to a lap steel. The player could then easily switch to a different neck on the same instrument, but this made the instrument so heavy and cumbersome that it could not be easily held on the lap. Trying to solve the problem with multiple necks led to the invention of the pedal steel guitar in the 1950s. Console steels are particularly favored in Hawaiian music, especially the twin neck eight string per neck configuration. Console steel guitars most commonly have eight strings per neck, with six or seven strings less common and mainly on older instruments. Up to four necks is not unusual, as without the benefit of pedals, the player has only as many tunings available as there are necks, but two necks are most common. Music Historian Andy Volk defines a lap steel as any non-pedal steel guitar that is played in a horizontal position (parallel to the floor) and this includes Hawaiian steel guitars, lap steels and table steels. There is a certain amount of disagreement about the preferred terms for non-pedal instruments. Some makers and authorities do not use the term "console steel guitar" at all, but refer to any steel guitar without pedals as a "lap steel guitar". In 1956, Gibson was selling an 8+8 string with folding legs as a lap steel guitar, but this particular instrument is unplayable in lap steel fashion; The Fender Stringmaster with up to four necks was also described as a lap steel guitar in some Fender catalogs, while in others it was simply described as a steel guitar.

• Name — Console steel guitar • Classification — String instrument • Related — * Plucked string instrument

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