National Double 8

[Eric Moon]

Hey all!

Just bought this guitar:
https://reverb.com/item/93407632-nation ... -lap-steel

Body is pretty mint, but all the electronics is suffering from 60 years in the cellar. The screws for the knobs are rusted in!

I'm hoping the knobs behind the pickup are like the balance knobs on Stringmasters, but they are completely frozen up and don't work.

I have not been able to find another instance of this guitar with the double pickups. Does anybody know anything about them?

Haven't had it apart yet, but thought I'd see if anybody can clue me into any of the inner workings.

Tone knob seems to be a short throw actual tone, rather than the three position switch I've seen on most of these.

Missing pickup covers, but I'll 3d print a set.

Excited to experiment with 8 strings after years with my 6-string oahu.

cheers,
-e

[Noah Miller]

The dual-pickup version was introduced about 1956. In the contemporary version of the New Yorker, the tone knob does indeed blend the pickups somewhat like a Stringmaster. From the labeling here, I suspect this is actually a rotary pickup selector switch.

[Tim Whitlock]

Try spraying it with lubricating electronics cleaner. Remove the knob and place a paper towel around the base of the shaft to keep the cleaner from getting all over everything. Then carefully spray the base of the shaft with cleaner and let it wick down into the place where the shaft meets the collar. Let it soak in for a minute and then rotate the shaft several times. I've done this many times with frozen pots.

[Michael Lester]

Eric... you bought it right.

I have a National Grand Console D8 that is a future iteration of your guitar.

A couple things... the adjustable screws in the pickups are usually frozen hard. They'll break under very little pressure.
The pickups are likely wound on a cardboard/paper bobbin. The paper breaks down and messes up the windings.
There may be ancient capacitors included in the signal chain in the volume/tone knob array that probably will need to be updated. I didn't remember to look to look at the jack in the Reverb photos - if it's one of the old 'phone' jacks that have a threaded collar - run away - it will fail when you need it most. Replace with a modern 1/4" jack.

The fact that you got legs with it is a big plus - many were sold without legs. I can't imagine holding on of these things on my lap or toting some kind of table around to hold it.

I highly recommend Scott Schwartz at Steeltronics for help with the electronics. He redid mine and it works great.

[K Maul]

Good that you got legs with it. They are heavy. I had a couple older single pickup versions. The tone is much darker than a Fender and I found it tricky for clean Country/Rockabilly style. For Blues with a little overdrive I liked them, but I prefer the Fender sound.

[Noah Miller]

the adjustable screws in the pickups are usually frozen hard. They'll break under very little pressure.

That happens a lot less often on these later pickups than on earlier ones with smaller screw heads.

The paper breaks down and messes up the windings.

No, it does not break down under normal circumstances. Plastic bobbins sometimes do, but these card-stock ones do not.

[Bill Sinclair]

I had a similar National D-8 with the two pickups and the pickup switch behind the bridge. IIRC, mine was a "61 model. I thought about replacing the switch with a blend pot similar to a Stringmaster but wound up selling that guitar before I got around to it. No reason why it shouldn't have worked. From Noah's post, it sounds like that's what National (Valco) eventually wound up doing. According to the serial number, your guitar is a '63 so maybe those are pots and not switches. Cool guitar. Keep us informed.

[Glenn Wilde]

Man, that is a cool one. Congrats and don't break those knobs!

[Eric Moon]

Thanks for all the great info!!

Well, I got all the knobs off without breaking anything. Whew!

Here's a pic for the forum:

nationalGuitarSmall.png

does anybody know what the fuzzy yellow pipe cleaner wraps on the string ends are for??


I'm going to pass the link to this post to my guitar tech. I'm going to hand it over to him, because I don't want to destroy the pickups. The screw settings are all over the place. I did get it to sound and the balance is not bad, so maybe that's intentional. But also, I could only hear the double pickup combination....

I'd like to replace the switches with pots. I note there is a resistor on one pole of the switch. Should that remain when replacing with pots?? What is it for? Is the neck pickup a little hotter?

nationalPickupSwitch2.png

If you are super sharp, you will notice I broke off the ground wire to the switch getting it out. Luckily, I was able to get a look at it before struggling to remove it, so I was able to re- jumper it.

Is this the problem output jack? It seems like a normal 1/4" to me, but I can have it upgraded. Sorry the pic is not more helpful, but now the guitar is back together, so I can't take another:

nationalOutputJack.png

I'm not a fan of the pickup switch knobs, although I'll keep them around for when I sell it. Does anybody know where to source the style of volume/tone knobs on this? They are a very elegant design. I'll look around.

I specifically bought this guitar for the warmer tone. I had a stringmaster on loan, and it was too edgy for me. The professionals sound great, and I might move up to one of those someday. The online recordings of national consoles have a tone I like, but nobody has recorded anything with the dual-pickup version, so I'll have to wait and see.

My current guitar is a '34 oahu diana, and I like the tone of that. I will miss the wider string spacing for the extreme slants I do, but I'm going to move to some flavor of M6 tuning on the national, and there seem to be a lot of more subtle slants available. Funny how badly you can tune a diminshed chord, and it still sounds like a diminished chord!

The serial number is G9618. That doesn't seem to be on the Gruhn's list I saw posted somewhere on this forum. Here is the volume pot, which might help date it. I haven't looked that up yet:

nationalVolumePot.png

Never mind, I see someone dated it to '63.... but it does have the switches, so.... ?

Thanks again!!!
=e

[Michael Lee Allen]

Do NOT wash the yellow cloth bag marked "accessories" as it will self-destruct. Not even hand-washing in Woolite. if it's marked or dirty just live with it.
MLA

[Eric Moon]

I found this schematic for wiring up stringmaster pickups:

stringmasterPickupWiring.png

Would this schematic require alterations or adjustments to adapt for this guitar? I'm thinking specifically of the resistors on the pickup switches shown in the pic in my previous post. I'm not clear what purpose they serve....

[Eric Dahlhoff]

Since that wiring puts the pickups in series, you'll need to be careful about the polarity of the pickups. You may have to swap the wires on one to make it sound right. The diagram is actually wrong stating that it gives you either pickup. (CW vs CCW)
One pickup is always ON and the other is blended in. So you need to choose which one you want always ON - neck or bridge.

As to you question about pot values, that's dependent on those pickups. You'll just have to experiment. Personally I would start with 500K pots.

[Eric Moon]

Thanks, I remember now that that's how stringmaster pickups work.... My guitar tech seems comfortable setting it up with a blend pot for the pickups, so I will let him do that. Thanks for all the helpful info!