I'm not good with cutting sound holes but was thinking about just cutting the corners of the lid off at 45 degrees and have those as the sound holes... What ya think
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May effect the strength of the box...I bought a round hole cutter bit for my drill and it worked great, tape the oustide of the lid and drill inward...Good Luck!
Hi Hip Bone Bellaire.
This second 'cut-corner sound hole' CBG is now my testbed for different fretboard layouts. The original fret board on it had a diatonic fret layout, which is pretty much what I normally make because of my familiarity with it and stick dulcimers (strummers, strum stick, call 'em what you like). The instrument sounds fine with the diatonic scale, but I was also interested in tying out a "bluscimer" scale (the blues scale on a limited (dedicated) fretboard) and a D Major Pentatonic scale (again on a limited (dedicated) fretboard). As the fretboard is held on with a couple of tie-wraps, it's easy to change them out. So, I'm experimenting with different scales w/o having to build a dedicated instrument. The bluescimer sounds a bit blusey, but I think I also need to change out the strings to something heavier and tune it to a more bass sound. For the D Major pentatonic scale, I'm still working on, but I expect it will want a nylon (or better yet, a Aquilla Nylgut) set of strings to get the "oriental" sound I want. It may be that I'll have to build dedicated instruments for these fretboards because of the different string requirements. I may also what to change the scale lengths. So, well see what happens in the coming months.
I've built a second CBG with corner cut sound holes. It's a 3-stringer with a 20" scale, metal frets and steel strings. For more information about it, you can read about it on my personal account. Just click on this
link and scroll down the page. Here's a photo:
I think the design looks pretty neat, even if the "sound holes" form open corner "reflectors"...almost
approaching a CB guitar-banjo. If he was to cut the corners on the bottom part and fill in
the cuts, he might be approaching an octogonal version of one.
Shawn said:
That's cool but what if you take the leftover corner lid parts ( just the lid wood without the sides) and reglue them to the base making it have side ports on all four sides. It would give it smaller sound holes and retaing the look you have going.
Rand Moore said:
Okay, Guys... I built one. Here's the photo:
It's a 2 stringer, diatonically fretted using nylon tie-wraps, ukulele tuners and Aquilla Nylgut strings. From a players stance, it does not sound very loud, but if you bend over so your ear is over the soundboard, it's pretty loud. So it seems to project well into the direction of the audience. The box also has a pretty good sustain. I've written more about it on my personal CBN blog and have some more photos of it. Wish I had two identical boxes so I could do a more scientific comparison of this type of sound holes verses no sound hole, vs one or two traditional round sound holes. I also saved the corners of the soundboard with the idea of partially re-closing the sound holes to see if that makes a difference. Before I do that, though, I'll do more experimentation and use steel strings and frets to see how loud it can be.
That's cool but what if you take the leftover corner lid parts ( just the lid wood without the sides) and reglue them to the base making it have side ports on all four sides. It would give it smaller sound holes and retaing the look you have going.
Rand Moore said:
Okay, Guys... I built one. Here's the photo:
It's a 2 stringer, diatonically fretted using nylon tie-wraps, ukulele tuners and Aquilla Nylgut strings. From a players stance, it does not sound very loud, but if you bend over so your ear is over the soundboard, it's pretty loud. So it seems to project well into the direction of the audience. The box also has a pretty good sustain. I've written more about it on my personal CBN blog and have some more photos of it. Wish I had two identical boxes so I could do a more scientific comparison of this type of sound holes verses no sound hole, vs one or two traditional round sound holes. I also saved the corners of the soundboard with the idea of partially re-closing the sound holes to see if that makes a difference. Before I do that, though, I'll do more experimentation and use steel strings and frets to see how loud it can be.
I wasn't sure how big or small to make the sound holes (corners), so I took the extreme of trying to make the soundboard as octagonal and equilateral as possible. I was thinking maybe with less edge connection to the sideboards, maybe the soundboard would be more free to vibrate and have a bigger sound. I was also thinking that if this proved true, then the next step would be to build a box with the lid's side walls removed to a similar amount as this one, but to keep the full square soundboard. The other test I want to do is to build one with a smaller set of sound holes (corners), maybe half as big as this one to see how that affects the sound. But, before doing these test builds, I want to test this box with steel strings and metal frets as I know for sure the nylon tie-wraps used for the frets dampen the sound significantly. I also kept the corners of my soundboard and plan to glue them the the top edge of the bottom of the cigar box as shown in a couple photos (not yet glued in) on my personal CBN blog. The thing I do notice about the design is that it projects a lot of sound forward toward the audience, and has pretty good sustain (better than a couple other CBGs I've built).
Replies
Interesting concept of trying out pentatonic blues oriented fretting. How would you mount the fret board then/?
Use of counter sunk screws on every second fret to hold it down rather than glue it on?
This second 'cut-corner sound hole' CBG is now my testbed for different fretboard layouts. The original fret board on it had a diatonic fret layout, which is pretty much what I normally make because of my familiarity with it and stick dulcimers (strummers, strum stick, call 'em what you like). The instrument sounds fine with the diatonic scale, but I was also interested in tying out a "bluscimer" scale (the blues scale on a limited (dedicated) fretboard) and a D Major Pentatonic scale (again on a limited (dedicated) fretboard). As the fretboard is held on with a couple of tie-wraps, it's easy to change them out. So, I'm experimenting with different scales w/o having to build a dedicated instrument. The bluescimer sounds a bit blusey, but I think I also need to change out the strings to something heavier and tune it to a more bass sound. For the D Major pentatonic scale, I'm still working on, but I expect it will want a nylon (or better yet, a Aquilla Nylgut) set of strings to get the "oriental" sound I want. It may be that I'll have to build dedicated instruments for these fretboards because of the different string requirements. I may also what to change the scale lengths. So, well see what happens in the coming months.
-Rand.
I've built a second CBG with corner cut sound holes. It's a 3-stringer with a 20" scale, metal frets and steel strings. For more information about it, you can read about it on my personal account. Just click on this link and scroll down the page. Here's a photo:
-Rand
I think the design looks pretty neat, even if the "sound holes" form open corner "reflectors"...almost
approaching a CB guitar-banjo. If he was to cut the corners on the bottom part and fill in
the cuts, he might be approaching an octogonal version of one.
Shawn said:
Rand Moore said:
Very neat design Rand. You know, this is what I like about CBG Nation..there are no limits
in building them, unlike conventional guitars where it" has to be done this way"
..or it's not going to sound the same as <whatever>.
The main thing is to experiment and find out how far you can go with what you have to work with.
Hi All...
I wasn't sure how big or small to make the sound holes (corners), so I took the extreme of trying to make the soundboard as octagonal and equilateral as possible. I was thinking maybe with less edge connection to the sideboards, maybe the soundboard would be more free to vibrate and have a bigger sound. I was also thinking that if this proved true, then the next step would be to build a box with the lid's side walls removed to a similar amount as this one, but to keep the full square soundboard. The other test I want to do is to build one with a smaller set of sound holes (corners), maybe half as big as this one to see how that affects the sound. But, before doing these test builds, I want to test this box with steel strings and metal frets as I know for sure the nylon tie-wraps used for the frets dampen the sound significantly. I also kept the corners of my soundboard and plan to glue them the the top edge of the bottom of the cigar box as shown in a couple photos (not yet glued in) on my personal CBN blog. The thing I do notice about the design is that it projects a lot of sound forward toward the audience, and has pretty good sustain (better than a couple other CBGs I've built).
-Rand.
No that's what I was talking about....
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