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Permalink Reply by Ben on August 28, 2009 at 1:41am

I have glued and not glued. My box with the best sustain so far was not glued shut but it was a very tight fitting box. Sometimes you can get extra noise because the seam acts kind of like a crack in the wood...would. If you want to glue, you might consider going the route of hide glue where you would open it up with a hot knife later. Or you could build some great electronics and glue it shut and hope for the best, while knowing it may have a shelf-life. (Its not like you're going to build just one...)

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Permalink Reply by Mortimer Snerd on August 28, 2009 at 10:02pm

Sustain comes from a solid bridge, neck strenght and nut, resonance comes from the box. Solid body body guitars with hardtail bridges, through body necks, and hard tight string nuts will give you sustain or longer string ring. Like the rock guy that plucks a string once and it screams for 10 seconds, These are qualities NOT normally found and built into a cigar box. You have to be careful what is put in print around here with these low budget builds. The more I learn in my short guitar carreer, I do notice that some CBG people talking of their builds being of the same intestanal apptitude of a $10,000 custom screaming rock guitar, you cant put a donkey in a horse race my grandpa always use to say.
However, you can get some sustain out of a CBG with a little luck, but mostly by a rigid build. IMO.

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Permalink Reply by StarGeezers on August 29, 2009 at 2:22am

MM , seems you could always build a little hatch on the back for E access...

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Permalink Reply by Wichita Sam on August 29, 2009 at 4:33pm

Mort,

In my experience the best sustain from a CBG is a hardwood neck (like oak) and a neck thru design, so that the string termination, bridge, nut and headstock are impacting a single piece of wood. Oh... the greater the mass of the neckthru, the better the sustain (skinny necks on 2 stringers rarely have the sustain of a 4 string "square neck" dobro CBG). When you move to bolt-on styles and set necks the sustain falls off....

just one builders experience.

the best,

Sam


Mortimer Snerd said:

Sustain comes from a solid bridge, neck strenght and nut, resonance comes from the box. Solid body body guitars with hardtail bridges, through body necks, and hard tight string nuts will give you sustain or longer string ring. Like the rock guy that plucks a string once and it screams for 10 seconds, These are qualities NOT normally found and built into a cigar box. You have to be careful what is put in print around here with these low budget builds. The more I learn in my short guitar carreer, I do notice that some CBG people talking of their builds being of the same intestanal apptitude of a $10,000 custom screaming rock guitar, you cant put a donkey in a horse race my grandpa always use to say.
However, you can get some sustain out of a CBG with a little luck, but mostly by a rigid build. IMO.

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Permalink Reply by the bivouac on September 1, 2009 at 3:29pm

sealing a box will "tighten up" the sound acoustically and effect the piezo ...nail not glue......u CAN still open it later.. i sometimes leave my bigger ashton and vintage boxes "open" (no glue or nails) and use dental elastics and screws to hold it tightly closed.....on other boxes that i choose to leave open, i just use the snaps it comes with...i dont prefer leaving "paper covered" boxes open. so basically think of an acoustic guitar. it's not sealed. the comments about sustain posted above mine are correct in speaking about the bridge,nut etc, instead of the box itself. cheers!

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