Just finished what I hope to be the mother of all travel CBGs.  Pictures are elsewhere - I haven't worked out yet how to combine pictures and test together ;-).

I wanted to build a light, compact CBG for travelling, so using a Jaime Garcia box that I picked up on a business trip to Kuala Lumpur together with a 24" scale neck/fretboard (thanks here to Joel from Blues Guitars France) and a homemade LM386 based amp, have been putting everything together over the last weeks.

Now to some of the things I learned (in no particular order):

1. Steel rules actually have rather sharp edges.

2. Blood soaks incredibly quickly into untreated wood.

3. Blood stains take a long time to sand out.

4. No matter how carefully you measure things, when you fit them together, something won't fit quite right.

5. Soldering irons take a long time to cool down.

6. No matter how much you protect the box whilst working on it, it will get scratched anyway.

7. The smallest possible items (think string height adjustment screws on a hardtail bridge) will fall out and end up in the most unlikely place.

8. Don't try searching for tiny screws outside at night.  It's unlikely that the local wildlife will find them interesting and make off with them - wait until it's daylight.

9. And finally .... Before pulling all wiring out and resoldering because there's no output to the jack, check that the volume pot is not wound down to zero.

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HA! Sweet work and great lessons learned bro! So... what sort of wattage and what size speaker in that sweet little beast? Kudos! -Glenn

Thanks Glenn.  The amp is a massive 1 Watt and the speaker is 7cm/2 3/4".  This was the only "reasonable" sized speaker that I could find with small outside dimensions.  As it is, I had to shave some of the neck away and file down one of the string ferrules to clear the speaker.

Attachments:

Hopefully it only happens once.

Taff

You know how it goes - I promised the wife I wouldn't built yet another one ;-)

LOL next time you want to do some blood letting to appease the cbg God's, try peroxide to get the blood out of the wood .guess you never of pack rats, the little bast***ds will run off with your hubcaps if they could pry them off. If it's shinny it's gone!

Thanks for the tip.  Maybe I should offer some sacrificial pack rats to the CBG Gods next time :-).

Blood stains add character! [Don't ask me how I know this.]

I leave the blood in and just tell everyone it has extra mojo.

LOL.  I enjoyed and eye dentified with that. 

I have found that anything dropped while working on a bench will find it's way to the furthest, dirtiest spot underneath and if working on a car, anything dropped will roll to its (unreachable) geographical center. As far as #9--always try the simple stuff first---of course you don't think of it till last! Art

Rodger that!

Hi, I have Found that the CSI method of looking for clues works (small powerful torch)  well for finding parts, even in daylight. I find it focuses the eyes to a specific area, works most times.

if it does not work, I call in the wife, that always works.

Taff

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