2015 Daniel Brauchli Weissenborn lap steel
Daniel Brauchli is a luthier and performer born in Alaska but now living in Tasmania Australia. All the photos on this page were taken by Daniel Brauchli and are used with permission.
I commissioned this lap steel in mid October 2015 and it was delivered in the first week of January 2016.
While it is essentially based on the idea of a Weissenborn guitar it is very different in design and construction. You can read more about his construction techniques at his web site.
You can also read more about the exact specifications of this guitar on Daniel Brauchli's Weissenborn page (mine is the standard scale model). It has:
- Tasmanian Blackwood back and sides
- Western Red Cedar top
- Eucalypt fingerboard with Tasmanian Blackwood and Rosewood inlay
- Tasmanian Blackwood bridge
- Brass nut
- Under saddle passive pickup based on K&K design
- 16:1 oval button Gotoh SGM tuners
I had originally bought a Chinese made Weissenborn in September 2015 to practice on but the Brauchli just blows it out of the water. It's at least twice as loud, the attack is superb, it has a huge amount of sustain and it sounds incredible. It cost more than 5 times as much as the Chinese one but was worth every cent. You get what you pay for.
Tasmanian Blackwood for the back and sides.
Western Red Cedar tops. I chose the one on the bottom.
I chose a Cedar top rather than Blackwood because to my ear the Cedar recording on his web site sounded nicer and richer. Blackwood might possibly have looked better (or maybe not) and it is a lot like the Koa that Weissenborns are traditionally built with, but to me the Cedar just sounded better. Tasmanian Blackwood and Koa are both species of Acacia.
The builder recommended GHS Laurence Juber signature bronze true medium acoustic strings for this guitar in open D tuning (D, A, D, F#, A, D). The gauges are 056, 042, 032, 024, 017, 013 but a couple of millimetres either way wouldn't do any real damage. This would also work fine for open G (D, G, D, G, B, D). This particular brand seems to getting harder to get as of 2020 (maybe they're not made any more) but anything in the same gauges will work fine.
More Info
- Daniel Brauchli home page
- Daniel Brauchli on Facebook
- A short video about Daniel
- Weissenborn on wikipedia
- Brad's Page of Steel
- Greg Cutshaw - Steel Guitar
- String gauge guide
This is intended for pedal steel but is also useful for lap steels. - My string gauges
- Lap steel capos
