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Comment by One String Willie on April 29, 2009 at 4:13am

Hi all-

As with a store-bought guitar, a lot of the sound quality of a CBG is in your fingers. That said, I think a CBG sounds best unplugged if you use the heaviest strings you can handle. I use medium weight phosphor bronze strings, which are very bright sounding.

I normally play CBG finger style (with thumb- and fingerpicks), but if you prefer playing with a flat pick, you might try the heaviest gauge pick you can handle (and I mean REALLY heavy). It will take some getting used to, but with a heavy pick you can get volume when you need it, and back off when you need it quieter. With a light pick, no matter how hard you play, the volume is limited.

Alternatively, you can play a single broom-wire string with a stick and whiskey bottle slide....

Best regards, Willie

Comment by Mark Werner on April 26, 2009 at 4:54am

I'm certainly not an acoustic engineer, but I've been playing regular guitar since the 70s and subscribed to Guitar Player for about 10 years; read a lot of tech and history articles.
As "Big Daddy" says, volume is about how much air you can move. So, a bigger box that vibrates freely will produce more sound than a little box that doesn't.
The quality of the sound is something else entirely... Luthiers still tear their hair out trying to get "perfect" sound.

My Cohiba mandola has a great acoustic sound; loud and of decent quality. It's a solid-cedar box well put together as are all these.
It would be interesting to play with carving the top of one of these; perhaps thickness sanding down to a more usual 4-5 mm and adding a bit of bracing....But then you're almost getting into actual luthiery practice.

Comment by Noisemaker59 on April 26, 2009 at 4:31am

In response to David's question: I record using a ZOOM H4 mini recorder using the recorder's mics & in stereo mode. As for thinning tops, I have done some with pain-staking sanding/filing method. The set up of this CBG is with a oak neck, scale length of 24.5in, ink-pen bridge (Thanks to Spencer for the idea!) , tooth-pick frets and a Home Depot Corian nut.

Comment by David Beede on April 26, 2009 at 3:34am

I just got this message from "Big Daddy" Darren Dukes
it reads:
"I think to maximize volume you need to do 1 of 2 things
1 use the largest deepest box you can get, and leave enough room for your soundboard to vibrate
or
do it like they did in the jukes, play a resonator it's built in amplification!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0IVVaua7GQ
this video was outside,with a camera condensor mic...and a really windy day it's plenty loud"
- - - - - - -
Darren - That does sound both good and loud. Do you have any audio of it fretted? Or is it just set up to slide? Ted Crocker also recommended Uke Cones for optimum acoustic performance - and I have one on order. Still the resonophonic sound is particularly good for certain kinds of music... and a straight "wooden" tone for others... we can for sure explore both here.
Thanks for the note and the link Darren.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0IVVaua7GQ

Comment by David Beede on April 26, 2009 at 1:16am

Hey Randy - That flush bone fret idea is wild. I did some scalloped fret boards on dulcimers a la John McGlaughlin - they do have an interesting feel, since your fingers only touch strings, no fret board, and you can bend a note by pushing down instead of pulling the string. My problem was I bent notes I didn't want to, needed a light touch. I see yours is quite a bit different. How do you think the bone frets will wear? And what would a re-fret job entail? [great pics by the way... I see you live waaaaayyyy outside the box].... and thanks for the wood observations too...

Comment by David Beede on April 26, 2009 at 12:18am

Welcome Jim, Steve, Barefoot, and Noisemaker. Thanks for that clip Noisemaker. That does sound good. How did you record it?
And thanks Barefoot, that's exactly the kind of experimental info I had in mind. Since not everyone may be familiar with the dif. commercial boxes... could you estimate the original thickness of your arturo fuente box, so we'd have a better idea of your final thickness?
Some other issues I'd love to explore are:
Top thickness (bracing if any?)
Top area - box size?
Back thickness & bracing if any
Bridge materials and methods... like position on top?
Angle of strings from bridge to tail piece (neck angle?)
Nut materials (or zero frets)
Action - general set up info.
String length?
String gauges?
What tuning used?
Neck material?
Fret material?
I'm sure I'm leaving some isssues out. You think we should create a Discussion Forum within this group for the various topics? I'm a little new at all this.
Maybe eventually we could come up with some kind of online form with much of this info that could be connected with sound files uploaded of our best efforts? Than we could be growing a kind of archive of samples of best practices?
Thanks again for sharing that Barefoot... keep those experiments, tips, insights and opinions coming!

Comment by bairfoot cajun on April 25, 2009 at 3:27pm

nice place you got here david i got an answer fer steve(Root's CBG). steve i thinned down the top of the last cbg i built its the big arturo fuente 3-string one i just finished last week.trimmed the inside edge at the paper wrap with a razor knife,then peeled back the paper enough to have a clean line there.next i used a sanding disk 80 grit used on a hand held drill with slow rpm,s to avoid damaging the edge wrap label sanded out all the rest of the paper and sanded the wood down about 1/ 3rd of the thickness and it did make a difference in tone and volume.it was worth the time it took to have more volume and tone. it was a good experiment that proved to be successful.

Comment by Jim Mitchell on April 25, 2009 at 1:53pm

Thanks for the invitation... Sounds like fun....

Comment by steve (Roots) on April 25, 2009 at 1:48pm

Was wondering if anyone have experienced thinning down top of cigar box from the inside to help acoustically.If so did it help and how did you do it?

Comment by Noisemaker59 on April 25, 2009 at 10:21am

Here's a short clip of my 3rd build (photo posted here earlier) which is acoustic only. I kinda like the sound. Haven't tried slide....still getting the feel for proper slide technique.

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