I play lap steel, a bit. I started learning it, anyway, though I've been neglecting music recently.
I have a cheapo modern two neck one, since I wanted to learn C6 tuning (traditional country/Hawaiian sound) and use the more standard open tunings as well. I didn't want to spend a lot of money because I didn't know if I was really going to be able to play it.
I play a
lot of bottleneck, more than I play regular guitar these days, so I figured it wouldn't be too hard, but there's actually not much comparison. Different techniques.
My insight is this: playing steel is
hard. Certainly harder than playing regular guitar. You're really learning a whole new instrument, regular guitar skills (and even regular slide skills) don't really transfer across.
The good news is that it's fun. Even simple stuff sounds great, once you get the hang of it. But it definitely takes some effort and some practice to start sounding OK.
If you're serious about it, join this forum:
http://bb.steelguitarforum.com/index.php
It is to steel guitar as OSG is to offsets. It's not quite as cool as OSG, but it's very friendly and the folks there are a gold mine of knowledge and wisdom. There's a few guys there that have been playing steels since the 1940s, which I find awesome.
