The Resonator Slide Lyre of Blind Turnip Gustafson aka The Historical Abomination
It all started with a well meaning gift…
Haraldr Bassi gave me a small funnel beaker. I am told it started life as a telephone or electric line insulator.
At the time I had with me my repro Anglo Saxon Lyre. So, naturally1) I re-tuned the lyre into an approximation of a modern open G tuning and to my knowledge, the first slide lyre was strummed.
A small repertoire of songs started to suggest themselves, bad filks of early 20th century Delta Blues mostly, and The Southern Scandinavian Sad Song Tradition was whelped… Along with it a name emerged of a clumsy man who rode the waves and sang… Blind Turnip Gustafson.
On returning home from that Pensic, it became clear that the resonator parts kit I had purchased was not going to be made into a guitar, but instead, a slide lyre.
The cone was deeper than the thickness of the extant lyres, so rather than make the body deeper, I added my old center grip round shield boss to the back of the body. It seemed the right choice.