This Steel's:
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1950's Magnatone Lap Steel Guitar
Silver & black MOTS Pearloid


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PREVIOUS OWNER REPORTED:  This item is an old Magnatone bakelite single pickup, all original lap steel guitar. It has Kluson Deluxe tuners, a single pickup with volume and tone and is in pretty good shape considering it's age (1940's, 1950's?) It does have a melted spot above one tuner and some wear and tear.

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Denny's notes:

Below is my initial inspection report;  Updated on subsequent pages after discovering some needed repair work:

This is NOT bakelite the previous owner reported;  It's MOTS pearloid.  The melted MOTS burn mark looks to be from a soldering iron, likely during someone replacing the tuner buttons!  That's too bad, because the rest of the Steel is in remarkably good condition ...Excellent were it not for the burn mark.  A reasonably good Luthier or Artisan can cosmetically faux-repair MOTS with by matching it's colors and patterns with pearlescent acrylic fingernail polish and polishing compound (toothpaste is a reasonably good polishing compound substitute).

Although I'm not particularly fond of this model Magnetone's sound / tone for classic Steel tones, ...it DOES scream like a scalded banshee when amp gain is cranked, ....very nice Blues or Rock tones.  I think it's lack of classic Steel tone is, like electromuse, because the pickup is mounted to a metal electronics cavity cover that induces a metallic & subdued tone into the pickup's case, and thus into it's signal.  This model Magnatone does however have a tasteful hot-rod Steel Guitar tone character with amp gains set high but short of banshee high gain.  I supsect that bedding the electronics cover plate better and driving the pickup screws down into the wood might very well eliminate the subdued metallic overtones, bring out Steel tones better, while still having one heckuva screamer when that tone mode is desired.

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UPDATE:  Closer inspection of this Steel at a later date revealed some more issues and repairs needed;  Caused by an amateur oiling job with a wrong and caustic type of penetrating oil.  More about that on this Steel's additional pages.
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Soldering iron
melted MOTS.
Better Pics on subsequent pages.
Or so I thought !!!  But see the next pages for better pics and for what I discovered under an amateur repair;  How NOT to oil a guitar, and why!  And progress reports on repairing & refurbishing this Steel.
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Removed from inventory for repair.