Modding a Harley Benton Slider II lap steel guitar

 

I found a used Harley Benton Slider II guitar with a stand for a very good price and decided to get it, mainly because of the price and because it will be my first lap steel guitar.

Overall it's a very nice guitar for the price, and with some modifications, it can sound really good.

The guitar comes with a very cheap and thin sounding single coil pickup, that was the first thing I intended on replacing. 

The pots are also cheap and had to go. Their shafts are smaller in diameter than the normal pots so the holes had to be widened to accommodate normal pots.

I had a set of single coils that I took from my American Standard Strat. I used the bridge pickup here to get a sharp sound which is more suitable for a lap steel. Fits perfectly.

After drilling to widen the holes for the pots' shafts, the new pots fit perfectly. Again, using 250K pots that I took from my American Standard Strat.

I left the original input jack for the meantime, even though it is also not a quality one.

Next step was to shield the cavity to reduce hum because of the single coil pups.

The bar that comes with the guitar isn't too bad, but I replaced it with a Shubb SP2 for better control:

Shubb SP2 steel bar

 I'm very pleased with the results. It makes a really good sounding and looking lap steel.

Here I'm performing with it.