Magnatone lap steel help

Cliff Kane · Post by **Cliff Kane** » 10 Dec 1999 11:43 pm

Hi all,
I'm new at playing lap steel guitar, and this is my first posting to this forum. I've got a Maganatone 6 string lap steel that I'm told is a 1948 model. It has no model designation on it, but there's a small metal plate on the back of headstock that says "MAGNATONE NO. 3538". It appears to be made out of wood (don't know what kind of wood) with a blue pearliod laminate. The pick-up is covered by the pearloid, but it looks like it has two sperate bar magnates. The pick-up works (it's got a louder signal than my Stratocaster), but the volume and tone controls do nothing, and there's a pretty bad hum coming from the guitar, and I'd like to rewire it. Can anyone refer me to a wiring schematic for this Magnatone, or have any wiring tips? It looks like the componets are original, but it also looks like it's been rewired before. The pots say 500K, and the capacitor is a wax covered paper tube that says "Tiger .02 MFD 600 VDC". The tone as it is right now is a little muddy, and I've been told that a differnt capacitor might brighten it up.
Any advice you can give me is greatly appreciated.

Cliff

Jason Lollar · Post by **Jason Lollar** » 15 Dec 1999 12:32 pm

A loud hum is not normal, you could have a partialy shorted out pickup or a loose ground connection or bad components. You can lower the value of the cap to .015 or less this will roll off less high end you dont need 600VDC it can be a 25V or less just a ceap ceramic is fine. I find .015 to be useable for a kind of wa wa sound, know what I mean?