Gitarre und Bass is a German monthly quality magazine for musicians – especially for guitarist and bass-players.

MG-Guitars 1A Premium Model

How can lap and steel go together? Is this about medieval birth-control? No, completely wrong: this is about the oldest type of an electric guitar, the lap steel guitar. It all started with the Rickenbacker Frying Pen in 1931 and since then both guitarists and luthiers have been fascinated by this sound.

Also in Germany inventors dedicate themselves to this peculiar sort of guitar. One of them is Michael Götz from Hofheim in Bavaria. He wants to enter the market of high-class handcrafted guitars and sent us a 1A Premium Model which has undoubtedly nothing to do with low budget.

Construction

Finest craftsmanship is what I see lying in the case in front of me. To start playing right away, Michael Götz even added a thumb-pick and a steel bar. How gentle! But first let us take a look at the construction of the instrument. The one-piece, massive body-neck-head construction is made of sapelli-mahogany. Up to the first fret its thickness is 43 mm. The surface of the body shows an impressive bookmatched-cut cocobolo with maple binding. A cocobolo layer is attached to the head-plate as well. Strings go through the body, pass the maple bridge with bone-inlay and run in a distance of 8 mm over the fingerboard that actually never gets touched. It is also made of maple, fret-borders are walnut. It seems strange, however, that the fingerboard broadens from the first to the 24^th fret up to 67 mm, whereas the string-spacing in the 24^th fret only measures 51 mm. The 1A Premium Model has a bone saddle and Kluson locking tuning machines in faded gold. The Seymour Duncan Jeff-Beck-Humbucker is controlled by a volume and a tone switch.

All in all, it is a precisely handcrafted guitar and if I am not mistaken Michael Götz used not less than 5 sorts of wood!

Performance

So finally let us get down to what the name of these guitars suggests: put it in your lap and slide over the strings with some steel … Due to the over-all appearance and the applied pick-up rocking sounds like those of David Lindley and Ben Harper come to my mind. For this I prefer a D-tuning (D,A,D,F#,A,D), a high-gain amp-setting and full throttle! Yeah – this is a heavy sound: bass fills up the cellar, screamingly high tones cut the air. This really gives you the creeps. If you turn back a bit the volume-switch, the heavy sound nicely clears up and turns into a profound rhythm sound, sustain included – of course.

Now to something completely different. Change of style – I rely on my favourite country-tuning (A, C#, E, F#, A, C#) and play something of Hank Williams Sr. (the master of sadness): a clean amp-setting, treble cut back and some nice reverb on top – yummie! You can literally see the Hank-Williams-sadness …

What I do not like is the position of the input jack. Put a bit further down towards the foot of the body, the guitar cable would not be pestering dangling between your knees. But anyway, at MG Guitar’s they are surely eager to make any of your ideas come true.

Upshot

It is good to know that there is a talented luthier that is crazy enough to spend his time on that sort of guitars. This Michael Götz 1A Premium Model looks extravagant, is perfectly handcrafted, is pure fun and is very versatile. Its price is with regard to the elaborate construction really fair. So both thumbs up – the right one with pick, of course.