I have one of these boxes screaming at me to make a guitar. The saw is toast, but the box has some life left in it. These are heavy gauge metal boxes and I know I want to make some sort of guitar out of it. The dimensions are about 28x12x4 (approx).
If done as a standard guitar, in order to reach beyond the 12th fret, the bridge would have to be on the leading 1/3 of the box, not on the tail.
What would you do?
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They are Beautiful, hats off!
So nice, I built it twice. Only took me a couple years to get started and actually do it though.
This one sold already.
This one is for sale! Roadhouse Blues Guitar RBS002
Looks cool with the neck all road worn like the steel box. Best thing it has its own carry handle. After seeing this, I had a thought of a variation on this design...a double neck, but with a left-hand neck configuration out of the other end...so it could be a "two-player" guitar. Hmmm...
I would add a built-in Pignose battery-amp in a heartbeat. I offered it as an option with the last one I sold.
Speaking of which, I think I'll go add that to the pricing options. :)
But yes, if you wanted to plug the guitar into a wall outlet with a nice orange extension chord, then I could easily fit a Fender Champ in there.
Or lead chords, picks and slides.
I'm trying to talk my wife into either heading out to Caffe Lena on Thursday after Thanksgiving dinner or giving me a hall pass to go out alone. Open mic. I think it would drive people crazy to show up and play this acoustic.
Thanks for all the input. I've started to sketch out the design criteria for a lap steel and the basics seem easy enough. The box is big enough and heavy enough to support the idea of a Lowe Bow type or other double neck construction and I like the idea.
I'm going to have to research the electrics a bit more. I want this to be loud, rough and offensive. Just like the cuts from the saw.
I bet I could stuff the guts from a Line 6 or similar amp right inside the box with a down-firing speaker or separate speaker cabinet. . .Now we're getting somewhere.
What about a double neck lap steel? Then you can play around with different tunings, pick ups etc.
Cheers
Pete
I think the lap steel idea has a lot of merit. Trying to accommodate a standard 6-banger would mean the bridge would indeed be in the upper 3rd of the box. Another option, as also discussed, might be a 34"- 41" bass. Or you could overlap the fretboard on top of the box, but to be honest, unless you made it a double neck (and even then), a single neck is gonna be hard to play unless you offset the neck to one side of the box in an overlapping fretboard config. You could try a bass neck top and standard string bottom neck double...
Or why not think out of the box a bit more, and make it a Lowebowe-style 3+1 hybrid? Why not take a leaf from John Maw's book, and do the metal tubes? Aluminum tubing should work...Then you can play some funky slide like pAt macdonald, plus the box gives you reso style plus electric. It'd be very kewl with a mini-bucker, in either red or white, in the neck position.
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