A friend of mine recently bought a dogbowl resonator cbg on Etsy. To be honest, it didn't have much "resonator" to it, but was built well and played in tune. A friend of his saw it and wanted a resonator cbg of his own. Long story short, I got the commission.

I know lots of you have made dogbowl, paint can lid, etc resonators, but for the life of me, I couldn't find one locally that had any more than a dull metallic "thunk" sound. Probably looked like an idiot scouring local stores and thrifts flicking various pan lids and bowls hoping for something musical. Anyway, I went back to the drawing board.

While researching resonator guitars on Wikipedia, I discovered that National's original design used 3 aluminum cones and a T-shaped bridge. They called it a "tricone". They added the more popular single cone version to the line a couple of years later. Further research revealed that tricones are still out there and are preferred by many players for their balanced tone - not as harsh or in-your-face as the single cone variety - yet still distinctly a "resonator". So a tricone it was. Now, where to find cones that will fit in a CBG...?

As it turns out, the bottoms of Arizona Tea cans are perfect. They're larger that normal aluminum cans and, if you shave off the cylinder part, it leaves a nice, domed surface that is ridiculously strong.

Now, three holes for the ridged bottom to sit in, a maple T-bridge and a cedar brace on the backside (which got shaved down quite a bit in the end).

Most of the rest is pretty standard stuff - neck-through, notched box (I made the box) and a 25" scale. Since the bridge has to be further in on the body, the neck was a bit longer than ususal. 23 frets, to be exact. Getting the bridge location and neck angle right was a bit of a challenge. There was only a minor bit of bridge adjustment possible and the string height couldn't change much either. Measure twice, cut once? More like measure 10 times, and cut with your fingers crossed. Ultimately, it worked!

For the pickup, I borrowed an interesting design from Highlander. They make a magnetic pickup specifically for tricone guitars. Single coil under the bridge with a piece of steel mounted on the bridge. Picks up any movement in any axis. Pretty interesting. And it really works! Would benefit from a preamp but the tone is there.

This was a fun build and I have another order already. Pretty happy with the Tricone! Be sure to scroll to the bottom for a quick sample video.