Show us your 'Made in the UK' Brit-boxes

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Permalink Reply by smojo on March 17, 2009 at 3:57pm

Here's one of my latest CBGs. The neck is mahogany, cut from some solid shelves I acquired from Freecycle. I cut the fret marks in with a saw and drilled shallow circles for the dot markers. The nut and bridge were made from threaded bolts. The strap I made from some webbing and tough string. It has a piezo pickup. Tuned to low open E. Nice bassy sound from a large box but not much sustain.

Permalink Reply by smojo on March 17, 2009 at 4:06pm

Similar spec build to the Robaina box but this one's a Ramon Allones box and I'm using a home made wooden bridge. I like these boxes, smaller than the other but always make good CBGs. This ones spoken for already.

Permalink Reply by Roosterman on March 17, 2009 at 4:25pm

Super-smooth builds Smojo. Im gonna take a pic of my last build - it'll really lower the tone!!

Permalink Reply by smojo on March 17, 2009 at 4:58pm

RandyRoosterGuitars said:

Super-smooth builds Smojo. Im gonna take a pic of my last build - it'll really lower the tone!!

I like rough and ready more than smooth. I just can't help myself though.

Permalink Reply by Mikalimick on March 18, 2009 at 12:10pm

I've only just made my first one, finished it last thursday, impossible to find cigar boxes at the moment so i've bought some thick ply and i'll have a go at making my own box. So the box is a small Sancho Panza box, neck is mahogany, sound holes glued up with some washers and the holes covered in with some aluminium mesh (used for reinforcing holes in the old days when you were fibre glassing your car). I've used A and D strings and the B string. Two bass strings are tuned for 12 bar blues and I use the top string for soloing. I've put a piezo pickup in. It's got a nice sound but no sustain. The fret markers are drawn on with a pen. As I said before this was a prototype to see if it worked and whether I enjoyed it. Man I LUV it.

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• Picture 002.jpg, 430 KB

Permalink Reply by Roosterman on March 20, 2009 at 6:07am

As promised, the JT Special... not what you'd call 'refined', but functional. Im fairly happy with it for a first build, considering it cost me £3.88 all in (and Iv hundreds of those coloured eyelets left too)... learnt a lot - mainly, 'I wont do it that way again' - and had a great time building it. Next on is already on the bench.

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• DSCF2277.JPG, 1.4 MB

Permalink Reply by Jakeyvimto on March 20, 2009 at 8:48am

Inspired idea using a bolt for the nut there smojo. ive been really unhappy with the plans I had for the neck of the box im building, that just looks like a way better idea

smojo said:

Similar spec build to the Robaina box but this one's a Ramon Allones box and I'm using a home made wooden bridge. I like these boxes, smaller than the other but always make good CBGs. This ones spoken for already.

Permalink Reply by smojo on March 21, 2009 at 4:59am

Thanks Jake, it works well and most of mine have used a bolt. Just make sure the thread is coarse enough so that strings don't jump out. Because of the small offset of the straight headstock, it is always necessary to make some sort of string trees to apply downward pressure on the strings too, hence the small rectangular plate.

Jakeyvimto said:

Inspired idea using a bolt for the nut there smojo. ive been really unhappy with the plans I had for the neck of the box im building, that just looks like a way better idea

smojo said:

Permalink Reply by smojo on March 21, 2009 at 5:04am

That is really nice, love the coloured eyelets, where did you get those? Love the neck design too, presumably the box is slid into place on the neck? Any particular reason for having the back of the box as the front of the guitar?

RandyRoosterGuitars said:

As promised, the JT Special... not what you'd call 'refined', but functional. Im fairly happy with it for a first build, considering it cost me £3.88 all in (and Iv hundreds of those coloured eyelets left too)... learnt a lot - mainly, 'I wont do it that way again' - and had a great time building it. Next on is already on the bench.

Permalink Reply by Roosterman on March 21, 2009 at 6:17am

Cheers Smojo. The coloured eyelets came from a haberdashery / sewing type shop... many colours including anodised, many shapes (stars, flowers etc), many sizes - these are 3/8" I think - less than £2 for 100!
Being my first CBG build, I made countless errors and made it difficult!... Its not a straight through neck, but a bolt on with a separate bolt on tail piece. I used an acoustic neck sliced in half, so that had to be bolted on I guess, but then I forgot to check the scale, so the bridge needed to be well over the back of the box - hence the matching tail piece. I boxed the sides of the box and it seems plenty strong enough - theres a pic of the inside somewhere on my page, though its not pretty.
As for building it upside down... I wanted to keep the little bit of fretboard which continues onto the body, just for asthetics, but that would stop the box opening, so I flipped it. I read an old wives tale somewhere that the bottoms of boxes are thicker too and give better sound... dont know if its true though! As an added advantage, you can get inside without having to take the strings off :o)
So Smojo, how do we post pics that show on this page without having to click the link?
Cheers

Permalink Reply by smojo on March 22, 2009 at 4:34am

Thanks for the info Ben. To post a picture without the link go into the reply box on this page and you'll see on the top tool bar, an icon that looks like a blue/green picture. Click on that and it will open a small box. You just browse to the location on your PC where the photo file is and select it to upload.

Permalink Reply by Roosterman on March 23, 2009 at 9:05am

Oops! Dont buy 3/8" eyelets - Your strings will fall right through! I meant 1/8" of course....

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