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The Great CBG Survey of 2016

So, I was messing around with creating surveys through Google Forms and thought it might be fun and informative to make a questionnaire for the CBG community to get an idea of what everyone is doing out there. Just some basic questions about what you're building, playing, buying and selling, and how you're tuning.

I wasn't able to embed the form here, so here's the link:

There's no login required and no personal information is collected. You'll be able to see the results of the survey when you're done and I will update this post with results as we go. I'll also provide the raw data to anyone in spreadsheet form if you're interested in analyzing further. This could be useful information for builders and sellers or anyone who is curious.

So if you're like me and have wondered if GDG is really the king of all tunings, whether 3 strings are more popular than 4, or what kind of pickups most people use, take a few minutes to fill out the form. The more responses the better, so share the link and hopefully we can answer some of these burning question!

RESULTS:

UPDATED 1/18/16: Thanks for the participation everyone! We received 85 responses in the first week. I'm going to leave the polls open going forward so go ahead and take the survey if you haven't already. For those who have taken it, here's a link that should take you to the summary of responses.

CBG Survey Responses

Here's the link to the Google Sheet through 1/18/16: (No login required - you should be able to view and download in whatever format you'd like)

Current Results Spreadsheet

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bad Finger (Eric) on January 17, 2016 at 9:42am

You can view the results after completing the survey. Since a login isn't required, it appears either Turtlehead will have to post the interim results, share the Google Sheets form where the responses are posted, or you can skew the results by taking the survey repetitively to see the results when you are done.

If login was required (Google Account) and editing responses was turned on, then you could go back into editing your response, not change anything and just see the current responses for the survey.

I guess it is an advantage of being late to the party that I got to see some meaningful results after I answered the questions. Early responders wouldn't see much that was interesting.

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Permalink Reply by turtlehead on January 17, 2016 at 1:01pm

I figured I'd let it run through tonight to give it a full week. I'll have the results and links to the Sheet up tomorrow. We got about 20 more responses this weekend.

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Permalink Reply by turtlehead on January 18, 2016 at 6:43am

I've updated the original post with links to the survey results. Everyone should be able to view them with no login to Google required. Let me know if there are any issues.

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Permalink Reply by Uncle John on January 18, 2016 at 7:14am

Interesting info. Nicely done. Thanks, Todd!

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Permalink Reply by Grandpa on January 18, 2016 at 4:57pm

Great survey, really interesting results. Thanks for all your input. Wayfinder did a good job expressing his deciphering of the results, and my thoughts pretty well concur with him. I was hoping that the survey would show my wife that my obsession with CBG wasn't unique. She wasn't convinced. The seven CBG's under construction out in my shop this very night did not help my case! I remind her that it keeps me off the streets and easy to find. As she slowly shook her head and went in the house, I put down the fretting saw, opened the laptop, and checked Cigar Box Nation. Lord, I love CBG's.

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Permalink Reply by turtlehead on January 19, 2016 at 4:31pm

Too funny Grandpa, I never thought about the "See, I'm not crazy!" angle. I'm sad but not surpirsed it didn't work ;)

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Permalink Reply by turtlehead on January 19, 2016 at 4:58pm

Good summary Wayfinder. I like the question about the 7% of the non players. That lines up with the people who call themselves builders. I thought that number would be higher actually, but glad to see so many people calling themselves players.

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Permalink Reply by Marcelo Vid on January 19, 2016 at 10:37am

I love analyse data, a lot of people are discovering CBG's like me (2 years), but the fretted and electric pickups I don't are expecting.

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Permalink Reply by turtlehead on January 19, 2016 at 4:38pm

That surprised me too Marcelo, especially fretted vs. fretless.

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Permalink Reply by Thomas Morgan on January 24, 2016 at 8:17am

Very interesting numbers. Thanks for doing this.

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Permalink Reply by Gordon Cooper on January 30, 2016 at 9:08pm

It might have been helpful but more complicated to split it into question sets around builders and players. Only one percent play diddley bows? Fascinating. We are a minority. Was surprised that "World" or other ethnic music wasn't listed as a response option as to musical genre played.

Thank you for putting this together! I just hope that builders don't look at the survey and stop offering diddley bows and chuggers!