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Finger playing cbg/glued extra piece of wood to neck. No good

So I made a few cbgs (tins)all the way through neck (slide type) I made about 7 and they are great. I also made a few cigar box type. Then I wanted a finger playing non slide cbg. I followed the same design but this time glued extra wood on the neck to raise the neck to same height as ridge of tin. The first two strings can be played but not the (little) third. Sounds kinda sitar like..cool but what am I doing wrong? I use bolts as nut and bridge and tried messing with different heights etc. no dice. Wondering if there is something very basic I'm missing about a finger playing cbg ?

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Permalink Reply by steven smith-- dewy on January 24, 2013 at 5:11pm

string might be laying on a hi spot on a fret ?

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Permalink Reply by Jon Leslie/Runaway Veal Music on January 24, 2013 at 5:24pm

I forgot to mention.. It's fretless...and now that I'm thinking about it being fretless wouldn't that prevent the strings from sounding out properly? I was thinking not to hassle with frets on my first finger playing build but maybe that's what's wrong to begin with? I mean isn't it possible to have a fretless finger playing guitar?

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Permalink Reply by wormil on January 24, 2013 at 5:51pm

You can only bend a string so far before it goes out of tune, since you don't have frets the strings will need to be close to the fingerboard.

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Permalink Reply by Jon Leslie/Runaway Veal Music on January 24, 2013 at 6:48pm

Duh I feel stupid. Frets might help eh.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on January 25, 2013 at 3:16am

Jon,

It is indeed possible to have a fretless, but finger-playable, CBG. I have one of Shane Speal's 3- stringers that can easily be played this way. If you have a buzzing, sitar-like sound on one string, it means that string is vibrating against something it shouldn't be vibrating against, most probably at one of 3 places:

Since you're using bolts for nut and bridge, check that the string is not sitting up against the screw portion of the bolt, but instead is in the flat. You may have to very carefully file a notch for the string to seat securely in, and the notch would be better U-shaped than V-shaped, and should be only fractionally larger than the diameter of the string in question. This may apply at either nut or bridge, if you can localize the buzz. The other place is at the tin edge itself, when you are fretting down on the string. If you have a flat neck, with no back angle on the neck, then as you fret the string, it touches the edge of the tin.

Another possibility is that your neck is not installed perfectly square in the tin, but is marginally lower than the tin edge on the buzzy string side. Yet another might be that your tin is dimpling unevenly with the variable string tension, depending on string diameter, causing the same effect. Finally, is this a wound or unwound string causing the problem? Maybe you can vary the string gauge for that particular string; it would be the easiest fix by far.

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Permalink Reply by ChickenboneJohn on January 25, 2013 at 8:17am

Check this put..it may (or may not..) be of some help..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiQPwDE-0U8&feature=share&li...

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Permalink Reply by Jon Leslie/Runaway Veal Music on January 25, 2013 at 12:37pm

I put a larger string on (acoustic) although all my smaller strings snapped. Now there's 3 same size string. For now it plays finger style but its not exactly a guitar! I also lowered action. It's ok. Maybe I'll need thicker strings until I figure out what's up. Thanks for the replies.