Rhymes wiv drool. 
Lap Steels have nothing to do with Country music, a Steel or Pedal Steel which both have 8 or 10 strings and are tuned a lot differently are for the country sound. Lap Steels are more for blues/rock sound!!!
Billy
Country? Lap steels have been used on a gigantic amount of musical styles from Yes to Pink Floyd to Zappa to Mahavishnu to Doobie Brothers to Almond Brothers etc… There are so many awesome rockin, jazzy, funky, fusion riffs on the lap it’s crazy.
A few human beings playing their asses off
And, oh! Mighty fine guitar, Jet, I want one too. Have fun playing 'til the cows come home! 
Steve,
seems you might be thinking of Western Swing-style steel playing.
Pedal and lap steels can be applied to any music genre, it’s all in
the player’s touch and how they apply the part. No reason why
any of them wouldn’t work, depending on the variables of song,
arrangement and feel.
Even Led Zep had a steel on LZ III. 
Hi ya Ulf! Yeah, they are rare birds, took me over 10 months to locate one
that wasn’t ready for the fire, wasn’t over-priced and where the seller was prepared
to ship to China (the last criterion always the biggest issue with US sellers.
I think they don’t like the Chinese.) 
But yeah, I’m playin’ away!
Hi Steve,
you’ll always have a degree of string noise, especially if the guitar’s action
is really low, and especially if it’s regular tuning as opposed to a chord tuning.
Still, it’s possible to play single-string licks and couplets over EADGBE given time
finessing your technique and the right touch and damping.
For regular slide (as opposed to lap steel) I have a dedicated LP, where
the action is not slicked out and I don’t have to worry about knocking fret edges,
buzzes and mis-voicings. I had my main LP “Pleked” a few years back which
rendered it quite unsuitable for any more slide playing.
Having said that, there’s not much string noise on my lap steel work, even when
I use round-wound as opposed to flat-wound strings. I actually mostly use the
former as I like the option of adding extra noise for effect (if I want it).
I’ve also found that depending on the tone and drive of your guitar and/or amp
setting, noise becomes a non-issue, it simply isn’t there in the mix.
One of the tricks to slide guitar that isn’t obvious is to use your trailing fingers behind the slide to damp the strings. Once you do it you will suddenly recognize it in how the slide players hold their hands. It isn’t perfect on a standard guitar setup, especially electric though. But, as the man with the new guitar said, the noise will be lost in the mix anyhow.
+1 for the left
here is the right
Depeninding on what you try to do it could also help to drop the pick and use three or four fingers. Not the nails as much as one fleshy finger per string to mute the strings you don’t want to ring. Slide is more killing noises than playing sometimes
+1, although I would add that I don’t drop the pick, but I do use hybrid picking position, which achieves pretty much the same thing. I tend to use my middle and ring finger more than the pick though. I also tend to play on the DGB strings and use pinky and base of the thumb to damp the E’s. I’m not great at slide and really only do it occasionally, so I found comfort doing it in that position for least noise/best intonation consistency. It also helps me avoid the fret hits.
I don’t know about HowlingUlf, but my tips were based on using a regular electric guitar. I don’t have a slide either. I also only really use one guitar. It is learning to damp and not press down to hard with the slide that makes it work with a regular guitar. No need to do extreme overhauls on a guitar. Unless you really want to get into it of course.
Yep, same here! One size fits all guitar 
That doesn’t mean I would never dream about a guitar collection …
Then again, I dunno. Let’s leave it open
My biggest internal struggle … why buy 70000 guitars when I don’t even play the one I have very well?
Just buy 70000 guitars, don’t play them very well for a while, then transfer all those small pieces of knowledge to one guitar and sell the rest. Now you play 70000 times better on that one guitar, so you’d better take care of it!
Tips from the coach, absolutely free!
Help, I think I’m turning into a politician??? 
Very true! I happened to see part of a Bill Frisell (jazz guitarist) show on TV this weekend, he had a lap steel player in his band with exactly the same lap steel as yours! It sounded great!