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Permalink Reply by evanmars on August 24, 2015 at 2:58pm

Move the bridge closer to the neck?  A long tailpiece so the strings aren't too short.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on August 24, 2015 at 3:26pm

20" long is exactly the length of a commercial Dreadnaught acoustic body. Their scale lengths, measured from nut to bridge, are typically 24 - 25.5". They usually have 14 frets clear of the body, but up to 20 frets on the fretboard. The bridge is usually placed 2/3 of the way down the body from the neck joint, so around 13". Yet, their fretboards are typically 18" or so long. How do they do it? Overlap the fretboard on top of the guitar top, by about 4-5", either by gluing the fretboard directly to the top, or by cantilevering the fretboard over the top, to leave up to a 1/4" gap between the fretboard and the top, so the top is free to resonate.

You could easily build either a neck-to, with the neck extending the full length of the box, but stopping inside it, or a bolt-on neck, or the more complicated heel-and dovetail joined neck.

With the neck inside the box, you then have to think about string attachment. If you want a non-glued bridge, then you use an archtop-style bridge with a trapeze tailpiece, or you glue / screw the bridge to the top, and either use pins like a commercial acoustic ( which will put a mighty strain on that top if it isn't braced), or go through the top and neck to the back, like a Strat. Alternatively, you can use a metal bridge plate with adjustable saddles. There are numerous examples of people doing that here.

Alternatively, you could build a 27-28" scale length baritone. Or go crazy, and build a 30-34" scale length bass.

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Permalink Reply by Randy S. Bretz on August 24, 2015 at 6:54pm

Do a double cut away ..this silverware box is 19" long....25 3/4" scale length

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Permalink Reply by Thumper on August 25, 2015 at 4:24am

I'm a bit confused, how could the scale length change because of the length of the box? Scale length is determined by the length of the neck from the nut to the 12th fret, then doubled....easy peasy.

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Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on August 25, 2015 at 5:17am

It doesn't. He was wanting to use an 18" fretboard, and couldn't figure out how to make that work.

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on August 25, 2015 at 9:15am

your info is sound Oily,an 18 '' fretboard,outside a 20'' box will take some doing,given that generally we look to bridge around 1/3 of the box from the tail,some numbers need crunching here,but also consider that you will end up with a looooong guitar,20 in box,plus 18 in neck,is it likely to be easily handled,i can't say for you,but it would not work for me,losing a few frets into the body however you do it ,i'm sure will make it a little easier to handle

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Permalink Reply by Kevin on August 27, 2015 at 10:49am

Thanks to everyone for your imput and advice. I am new to CBG building and am hooked. I now have some good information to help me build these long box CBG's. I have built 4 regular sized ones so far.

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Dudley on September 8, 2015 at 4:54am

I am finishing up my first CBG and I too had some headscratching and texting moments trying to figure it out!  My box is 16" long, so I used about a 36" piece of curly maple right through the box with a spliced in birdseye maple head.  The fret board is 16" exactly and I just fretted as much as I could, maybe 15 frets.  The scale is 25.5" from nut to bridge, so the bridge is somewhere around 2/3 down the box.  Getting the frets in the mail today and then finishing everything and praying it sounds awesome!!!  Just did a single piezo pickup on this build, probably go better next one.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on September 8, 2015 at 8:26am

Another option is to make the neck shorter and extend the fretboard over the top of the box, but not touching the top. My first CBG build has a extension over the top. For some reason I though it would be a good idea to make a 24 fret acoustic. Silly Me.

Randy's double cutaway idea is also good.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin on September 8, 2015 at 8:33am

Yeah, that has been suggested previously and i am probably going to impliment that. I won't start this project till I practice with some of these suggestions on some free cigar boxes I have.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin on September 8, 2015 at 8:35am

I'm not a double cutaway fan but I will use the fretboard on the box idea. There r some other good suggestion I will try as well. Thanks for the help.

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