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Volume issues

I've made a dog bowl resonator cbg. At first, I stringed it with the three thinnest strings of the pack, and it sounded great acoustically, with good volume, but I wanted a deeper sound, so I stringed it with a third, a fourth and a fifth from an acoustic pack and tuned it GDg. It sounds good plugged in, but acoustically it's pretty quiet, not like a solid body unplugged, but quieter than before, with the other strings.
I'm happy with it, but I would like a better acoustic sound. Does anybody knows if I can fix it? I don't want to come back to the thinner strings, I like the sound of the thickest.
If it can't be solved I'll end up with a guitar that sounds great plugged in, so it's not a big problem at all.

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Permalink Reply by JL on April 12, 2017 at 2:48am

just guessing, the 3 thinnest strings were probably closer in pitch to the natural resonant tone of the dog-bowl, so the vibrations enhanced each other. (thicker metal -> stiffer -> higher natural resonant frequency)

on a tongue drum, to lower the pitch of a particular tongue, it is thinned at the base to make it more flexible and lowers the pitch, to raise the pitch of a note it is thinned at the tip making it lighter and move faster.

or like the resonator pipes under a xylophone/vibraphone are sized to get a natural resonance of the note of the key above them.

not that any of this helps you, other than you may want to keep the higher pitch strings on it and look for another dog-bowl for another build for the lower pitched strings....

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Permalink Reply by Rubén on April 12, 2017 at 6:15am

Thank you, it helps. I like the sound of this one, plugged is awesome, so in my next resonator I'll try different things, maybe a thinner bowl or a can lid...

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Permalink Reply by John Sawyer on April 12, 2017 at 4:38pm

Paint can lids are surprisingly awesome.. been using them for a long time...

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on April 12, 2017 at 7:38pm

I think JL hit it on the head.

I did a 6 string Reso using a stainless bowl in a stainless colander with acoustic strings, didn't sound good, but steel strings might have been great if I had thought about it at the time.

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Permalink Reply by Moritz Voegeli on April 12, 2017 at 8:12pm

I try out every dog bowl I come across with, some sound like bells, some not at all. By the way: someone out there with affinity to farming who tried to use a sheep or goat tin bell as resonator?

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Permalink Reply by Jim Saraceno on April 15, 2017 at 8:43am

I've never made a resonator before so I'm not sure if this would follow through but I have found with standard CBGs the light strings sound really good with no sound holes where the heavy strings sound better with sound holes. So my question to you is... Does your guitar have sound holes?

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Permalink Reply by Rubén on April 15, 2017 at 10:37am

It has two small soun holes. I have made a cbg without sound holes and used the first three strings of the pack and it sounded great.

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Permalink Reply by Moritz Voegeli on April 15, 2017 at 7:29pm

Jim, do you have cbgs built on the same boxes in the same way, once without sound hole and light strings, once with sound holes and heavy strings?

Rubén, as Titch remarks, I rather think the bridge is the issue: on a dobro guitar, there's a big difference whether the bisquit sits evenly on the resonator cone or not, and between different materials of the bridge above the bisquit.

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Permalink Reply by Titch the Clown on April 15, 2017 at 12:45pm

I was having volume problems on my dolmade tin resonator uke till I fitted a hardwood biscuit like on the commercial resonators. A scrap of hardwood about 1/8 thick cut into a small circle is what did it for me. I had to screw mine in place because I had no flat bit on my cone.

https://www.instructables.com/id/Resonator-ukulele-from-dolmade-tin...