Lap Steel String Gauges

Lap steel guitars need the strings to be fairly stiff in my opinion. Under the pressure of a performance there's a tendency to press too hard on the string, which of course stretches it out of pitch. So the more resistance to that, the better.

Around 2008 Brad Clark from Cole Clark guitars advised me that their standard on a Violap is 68 C, 52 G, 38 C, 22 Plain G, 16 C, 16 C. It seems a bit odd to me to have two Cs at the top. He also said "The lower the tuning the lighter the gauge. (to balance the bottom end...)" - this makes absolutely no sense to me but I'm reproducing it here so you can make up your own mind. Surely the lower the tuning the heavier the gauge to maintain a bit of tension in the string? In 2022 I bought a Cole Clark Lapdog and their website says they use Elixir Nanoweb Nickel wound  68 52 38 22 16 16. They told me that they are shipped using standard open G tuning (D G D G B D).

Notes

• 'W' means wound. All others are unwound strings.
• The gauges below are approximate. I just take whatever they have in stock - with an 066 I would take anything up to 070 and down to 062 and it would still probably be fine. But the top string really can't be any thinner than 016 in open D or G.
• See special notes re acoustic lap steels below.

Weissenborns and acoustic lap slides

An exception is Weissenborn style guitars. They tend to be fairly fragile and you can't put too much tension on them or, like normal flat top guitars, the top and bridge can be damaged. The recommended strings for Weissenborns are shown at the bottom of the table below. I used to use a standard set of D'Addario EJ17 Medium acoustic strings instead of the recommended ones. Their gauges are 056, 045, 035, 026, 017 and 013. However with my new Daniel Brauchli lap slide the builder recommends GHS Lawrence Juber signature bronze true medium acoustic strings for this guitar in open D tuning (D, A, D, F#, A, D). Those gauges are 056, 042, 032, 024, 017, 013, which would also be fine in open G (D, G, D, G, B, D).