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Corner Sound Holes

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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Permalink Reply by Hip Bone Bellaire on January 5, 2011 at 2:11am

WOOOOOOW, that's real nice.... how does it sound?

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Permalink Reply by Rand Moore on January 9, 2011 at 4:29pm

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.

-Rand.

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Permalink Reply by carverman on January 10, 2011 at 3:31am

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?

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Permalink Reply by Mad Mike's CBG's on January 10, 2011 at 8:11am

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!