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Permalink Reply by Jonah on March 9, 2017 at 3:42pm

yeah i forgot to mention i'm going for a four string but on the wood for the neck and fretboard what would you recommend

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on March 9, 2017 at 3:13pm

Welcome Jonah, your requirements are a bit varied, but i'll try to help, the warmer sound you are looking for is probably best found with a humbucker, but depending on the pick up itself a single coil might be just what you need, [ i'm reading warmer as mellowish as opposed to hotter or sharper], for the same reason mounting closer to the neck will take the edge off a bit, Gitty sells both single and buckers at reasonable prices if you are in the States, re tuning, the best bet is to look at lots of videos and see what sounds closest to your ideal, open g is probably the most common, with probably the most lessons using it also, but no need to get fixated on one tuning, buy a set of 6, and you can chop and change at will, the most relevent thing re tuning , except for personal preference, is how the tuning goes with your vocal range if you want to sing along

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Permalink Reply by Jonah on March 9, 2017 at 6:38pm

how do i prevent the string from breaking and what gauges should i be going with? i see like high low strings slinky strings regular strings and idk what that all means what should i go with to test out the different tunings

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Permalink Reply by Jonah on March 9, 2017 at 7:30pm

i did take wood tech last year and i am handy with tools but i think i've figured everything i need to know with so many different opinions put there it was hard to tell what i really needed without asking someone thanks for your help

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Permalink Reply by JL on March 10, 2017 at 2:49am

Do a dry layout of your parts with a ruler before cutting anything to minimize oopsies.

You want the saddle to be about 1/3 from the tail end of the box, then measure up to where the nut will be for the scale length you want and take a good look at how things will line up.  If you are really worried about breaking strings then go for a 24"/61cm scale, that gives you a little slack for string tension.

Use a proper fret saw to cut the slots. (cb gitty's is very affordable). A lot of us have tried alternative saws and after buying 3 or 4 wrong saws to find one that works well enough it turns out to be cheaper to just get the right tool in the first place.

or buy one of gitty's pre-fretted fingerboards.

use the cut-offs from your neck to glue to the sides of the through neck to make the neck wider inside the box where you will put the mag pickup so that it is still quite strong after you cut a notch to accommodate the pickup.

If you are not real sure/confident about the wiring, Gitty sells a good selection of pre-wired mag pickups that are just mount and play.

read a lot of the articles here and elsewhere about setting the intonation at the bridge and setting the string action height at the nut end, it will save you a lot of WTF moments later.

Its real easy to change out the strings for a different tension/feel/tuning after the git is built, but if you have friends who play commercial 6 string electric guitar, go with an open D tuning (DAda) which matches what they call "Drop-D tuning" and they can teach you and you can jam with them easily.

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Permalink Reply by Moritz Voegeli on March 10, 2017 at 6:43am

Before fretting your shaped neck and mounting the tuners, take a break, try to put down some frets to a piece of scrap wood [same as neck or fretboard] and try to mount a tuner, so if something goes wrong you don't loose your work.

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Permalink Reply by turtlehead on March 10, 2017 at 5:34pm

Hi Jonah - as far as tuning goes, I'd suggest GDGB.  That is as close to a standard tuning as you'll get for cigar box guitar with lots of info, lessons and chord charts out there.  The chord shapes are easier than GDGD and if you're into classic rock, you'll be able to play a huge chunk of the Rolling Stones catalog with this tuning.  Keith Richards used a 5 string version of this (GDGBD) to write things like Brown Sugar, Honky Tonk Women and Start Me Up to name a few.

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