Hi, new to the forum and guitar building.
I won't be making a cbg for my first build, it will be either a shovel variation or a solid bodied made out of pitch pine,
I have access to some quite aged pitch pine pews and am considering turning the end of one of them into the body of a 3 string with an engraved copper sheet for scratchboard.
Does anyone have any experience of pitch pine or similar dense heavy woods and their effect on tone etc?
Replies
If you are planning a solid body and the pine is well aged (dried), it should have good tonal quality (depending on the pickup used and the bridge type.
A magnetic pickup mounted at a location around 15% of scale and a simple tone control circuit with a 500K pot and 0.047 uF cap should give you the control over tone to cover a range of sounds.
A hard-tail bridge appears to give a lot of sustain when mounted on a solid body.
The wood itself shouldn't present any problems as a great variety of woods have been used for the solid body of a guitar (including pine or even solid core doors).
Get you pickup and electronics right and a bridge that is firmly attached to the wood and you should have a nice sounding guitar.
Keep us posted
cheers Tom I have a double coil humbucker in transit with 500K pots and 0.022uF capacitor. a hardtail bridge has also landed.
It's going to be fretless since my left hand is mashed on the first two fingers (power tool argumemnts I lost) and I have a soft spot for slide guitar ala Justin Johnson (if only I was 1/10th as good).
Sounds like you have all the good bits handled. A slider is the way to go for a three-stringer. Easy to learn and can make great music.
I'll post some pictures as I get going and the finished beast. possibly even a video of me trying to play it!