RONNY BENNETT

From playing with the Hillsiders from the 1960's, to "steeling" the show at his own wedding in Inverness in August 2008, Ronny Bennett is never far from a steel guitar.

His name and reputation as both a player and maker are without equal in the history of the steel guitar in the UK.

For over forty years he has combined his love of playing with an incredible drive for the perfect instrument and has been producing amazingly well-engineered guitars from his workshop in the Wirral, Merseyside - twin-necks, pedal steels with any combination of knee levers and pedals, his own-designed keyless tuning system, and of course the lap steel guitar, to which anyone who has ever picked up a solid-body electric guitar owes a debt of gratitude, since every one of them can trace it's history back to the Rickenbacker 'Frying Pan' guitar of 1931.

As is the case with regular solid-body electric guitars, little has changed in the fundamental design and components of steel guitars since those early days. It is still, in essence, a plank of wood, with strings stretched along it, and a pickup. But you only have to pick up a cheap imported instrument and compare it with a Bennett to see that quality will always win in the end. The quality of the wood, the raw vintage sound of the hand-wound pickup, the exactness of the bridge and nut (purpose-made for these guitars rather than adapted from regular electric  guitar hardware), the colour-coded position marker system - put all this together with a choice of 6- or 8-string models and a hard case and you've got an instrument that will always sound great and never go out of date. A-lo-ha!

We've been distributing Bennett Lap Steel guitars since 2003 - production numbers are small so if you see a Bennett guitar on your travels, buy it! They are few and far between but take a look at the list of stockists and you'll see that the appeal of these instruments ranges far and wide.