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I made my first CBG with a friend last summer

I spent about $100 on the parts and then a bunch of time with my friend building it. Here is the parts I purchased:

Bridge

bone nut

machine heads

la famosa box

seymour duncan pick up

amp jack

and a trash out yamaha acoustic which we salvaged the whole neck off of.

After looking around here I feel like a fool because almost everyone made there own neck and bridge and everything else, However, because of this first build I learned so much about instrument making and I have an even bigger interest in it and of course I had fun. While my friend and I waited for some the glueing to dry we went out to this secret fishing spot in MN and caught some big fish.

It all started for me when another friend of mine found out I love woodworking and started badgering me to build CBG parts for him. So I looked into it and got a bit obsessive about it until I finally built my first. I feel a little dumb though because my friend and I were informed that the distance from the twelth fret to the bridge should be 12" that was our first mistake. I now know that it should be the same distance from the bone nut on the tail to the twelth fret. And then our worst mistake was having a bridge that brought the strings way to high off the fret board. We took off material from the bridge and I tightened the truss rod which helped tremendously but its still a little too high but bearable. Like I said before I learned a lot. LOL!

Some key points of ingenuity: We glued some old kitchen cabinet doors together so we had a block of wood to attach the neck and create distance between the bridge and fret we ran that into the length of the box. And then we cut out a piece of an old pick guard as the truss rod cover which looks so natural on the guitar you wouldn't even guess it was jerry rigged. My friend did some really clever Macguyver trick to wire the pick up in. I'm still not sure how he got it mounted without screws.

Since my friend and I built this I finished a queen ann flip top table made entirely out of black walnut wood. And now I am working on a solid body flying V electric guitar. I bought the neck and all the other parts but I am building the body from scratch. Eventually I am going to build a real traditional acoustic guitar using the book "Guitarmaking Tradition and Technology" as a guide. But I may build another electric solid body first. Or this chess table I have been dreaming about.flying v

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Permalink Reply by Printer2 on February 24, 2012 at 8:34am

I wish I did not toss out an old neck that I had sitting around for years. But ten years ago I did not think I would get back into music.

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Permalink Reply by MichaelS Country Boy Guitars on February 24, 2012 at 10:09am

Looks good. I'm just curious did you set the bridge back as far as it was on the acoustic that the neck came off? It looks like it may be too close because the strings are nearly falling off the frets at the bridge end. If so this will throw your intonation off.

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Permalink Reply by Timothy on February 24, 2012 at 11:53am

It was a different bridge than the one from the throw away guitar. we set it back to where we thought it should have been. The problem was that we were told by some guys at a guitar shop where we got the parts that the distace from the bridge to the twelfth fret was supposed to be 12" but that is false. What ever stringed intrument you are working on the distance from the bone nut on the tail piece to the twelth fret will be the same distance you will use between the bridge and twelfth fret. The strings are to high off the fret board because my friend and I did not think that the bridge we used would be so high.

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Permalink Reply by Bluesheart on February 24, 2012 at 1:28pm

Real nice looking guitar and like you said a great , if expensive learning project. If you play it with a slide and don't fret it, I'm sure you can get some great sounds out of it. You could use little dots on the side of the fingerboard to indicate where the "real" notes are for the slide?

Just my thoughts, pretty thing though.

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Permalink Reply by Timothy on February 25, 2012 at 2:31pm

I have a question for everyone. Since I fucked up with the bridge that I put on this guitar. How do I go about removing the bridge without compromising the integrity of the box? I used regular wood glue when I attached it to the box.