the.com/lap steel

means A guitar played flat on the lap (or on a stand), its strings pressed and slid with a metal bar instead of fingers on frets, producing that signature swooping, vocal whine.

from The 'lap' is literal — the instrument rests horizontally across the player's knees rather than being held upright against the body. It descends from the Hawaiian steel guitar tradition of the early 1900s, where players slid a smooth steel bar along the strings (hence 'steel') instead of fretting notes, a technique Hawaiian musicians popularized and which swept into American country, blues, and pop almost overnight. The lap steel is essentially that original Hawaiian style kept in its purest, unmounted, knees-up form, as distinct from its console and pedal steel descendants.