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Permalink Reply by Doc Oakroot on June 12, 2009 at 3:00am

Just FYI, John gets pretty pissed off by people copying his design. So best to figure it out yourself.

If I were going to build something with Lowebow capabilities, I would use a single flat neck with one bass string and 4 guitar strings and I'd put frets on it. I actually designed, but never built, this before I ever saw a lowebow. The big design problem with this design is getting the tops of all the strings to be in the same plane for the slide - it requires the bass string fret board to be lower than the fret board for the other strings.

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Permalink Reply by Anderson on June 12, 2009 at 4:01am

I have absolutely NO INTENTION OF COPYING THE LOWEBOW. He and I actually had a conversation about people ripping off his design when he played a show for me here in Fort Wayne and I could tell how upset it makes him.

I just like the dowel rod look better compared to the typical stick and was wondering if there were any plans floating around to deal with the dowels.

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Permalink Reply by Doc Oakroot on June 12, 2009 at 4:29am

Cool. Just trying to make sure you don't stumble into a fight you weren't looking for. But I guess you've got that under control.

I use a dowel on my giveaway guitars. A couple of posts down in my 10 minute guitar thread I attached the plans for my giveaway guitars.

That design works better if you flatten the part in the box to raise the fingering area to the top of the box. But it makes it harder to cut the hole for the dowel (but still not hard - you just have to do more than drill it.)

You can also mount the dowel outside the top of the box. John Lowe's simplest design does this using hose clamps to hold the dowel on. I've done it (with a rasped flat area to increase stability) with a couple of screws from the inside.

Anderson said:

I have absolutely NO INTENTION OF COPYING THE LOWEBOW. He and I actually had a conversation about people ripping off his design when he played a show for me here in Fort Wayne and I could tell how upset it makes him.

I just like the dowel rod look better compared to the typical stick and was wondering if there were any plans floating around to deal with the dowels.

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