The most advanced lap steel ever?

LOG – A New Lap Steel Guitar & Musical Playground - YouTube

Verso Instruments has pivoted away from electric guitars to create a lap steel with freely movable pickups, putting a potentially revolutionary spin on the humble lap steel slide guitar.

Described by company founder Robin Stummvoll as “a playground for modern music creation”, the beautifully designed, minimalist instrument hinges on the movable pickup to uncover an “unheard spectrum of timbres and new playing techniques.”

The Log’s steel top features a striking Pop Lilac colorway and a raw industrial-finish stainless steel back, but it’s the pickup, which can travel up and down its 22.5” scale length, that catches the eye above all else.

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And Stummvoll is right, the pickup-shifting capability helps reshape its tonal charm again and again. With the pickup in the middle, it produces a “bassy, boomy” sound, but slide it towards the bridge, and the brightness increases with each passing inch. Hook it up to a reverb pedal and the pickup, which is wired into the base, can be used like an Ebow for lucious, violin-like swells.

It also has a stereo mode for running two pickups. In the demo video, Stummvoll runs one pickup into a reverb, and the other into a Boss XS-1 pitch shifter, and the results are stunningly ethereal.

Moving the pickup while notes are ringing out can also generate a chorus-style effect, with the newfound freedom of the pups encouraging players to embrace the instrument in new ways.

If the concept sounds familiar, that’s because Verso has already bestowed its futuristic-looking Sine guitar with the same superpowers. It quickly established itself as one of the most unique guitar designs of 2025, and in 2026, the Log looks to carry that mantle into new territories.

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Verso Log Lap Steel — (Image credit: Verso Instruments)

The response to the Log’s launch has been so popular that the small batch instruments, made in Kassel, Germany, are currently sold out. But fear not, for Verso has set up a notification mailing list to let you know when stock becomes available again.

The Verso Log is priced at €699 (approx. $810). It ships with a tuning key, an A3 art print with a curated tuning chart on the back, and a foam-padded cardboard box.

Visit Verso to sign up for stock notifications.

A freelance writer with a penchant for music that gets weird, Phil is a regular contributor to Prog, Guitar World, and Total Guitar magazines and is especially keen on shining a light on unknown artists. Outside of the journalism realm, you can find him writing angular riffs in progressive metal band, Prognosis, in which he slings an 8-string Strandberg Boden Original, churning that low string through a variety of tunings. He's also a published author and is currently penning his debut novel which chucks fantasy, mythology and humanity into a great big melting pot.

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