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Last 9 for St. Louis Cigar Box Festival

6 three stringers, 1 four stringer and 2 Ukuleles. The 2 Ukes were my first attempt at building one. They look pretty good and turned out ok I guess. Next time I will use 1/8th" sound boards instead of 1/4" since there is hardly any tension at the bridge compared to something with steel strings. Wish they made normal strings for sopranos instead of the nylons. They seem harder to keep in tune. Not happy with the tail pieces on the rest of them. Maybe a bit of a design issue, but the tail was too high in the original configuration leaving no string fall at the bridge. So I reversed the string and now the ball ends are exposed on top of the tail. A bit tacky in my opinion, nut it solved to problem. If I moved the tail down and re-anchored it, the ball ends would be digging into the sound board making it difficult to change strings later on.

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Comment by Downtown Vinnie on June 7, 2013 at 3:41am: beeeeeeeautiful stuff Todd

Comment by Maddog on June 7, 2013 at 1:19am: 9 for the road, nice Todd!

Comment by Todd Marks on June 6, 2013 at 5:04pm: These are all acoustic. I have put pick ups in them before but the piezos seemed very touchy and overly sensitive. Normal electric pups require cutting on the neck under the soundboard to allow them to sit down level with the top. I don't like doing this for fear of weakening the neck. I do have an alternate design where the neck stops 1/3rd of the way into the box and screws are used to secure the supports. Where it stops is the location of where the pickup would go. Wiring, switch, jack and pots are then mounted, but after spending close to 100 bucks on all of that including price of the pup and adding to the price of the guitar, your not really making much back it seems. That's why I just make them acoustic and if the customer wants to put a pickup in it, he/she could get a bridge piezo and install it with very minor modification. I have seen some of mine being played with a secondary microphone pointed right at it with no problem but it would have been nicer if it had a pickup.

Comment by Tom Melton on June 6, 2013 at 9:16am: man these CBGs are real cool, im actully from around St. Louis, right now im deployed to Afghanistan, but i have still been nuilding CBGs. u should take a look. any way, awesome looking instraments.

Comment by Chuck Cobillas on June 6, 2013 at 6:03am: Tod they all look great!

Over the past couple of years I have built many CB Ukes, all with nylon & Aquila Nylgut strings. I was very disappointed at first with the strings needing to be re-tuned every time I wanted to play. I later realized this is normal for these types of strings and after a month or so they stabilize and are pretty much done stretching. After several months to a year you will notice the sound quality improves. I use only the Aquila Nylgut strings now for all of my Uke builds the wait is worth it!

Also, I am planning to attend the St. Louis Fest this weekend. I'll see you there!

Chuck

Comment by Ron "Oily" Sprague on June 5, 2013 at 6:14pm: That's gorgeous work, Todd. I especially like the 3rd, 5th, and 7th from the left. Pickups, or all acoustic?

Comment by the anonymous pick on June 5, 2013 at 5:47pm: you do amazing scroll work man .

ps .. give those nylon strings a few days to stretch out . you will find they will stay in tune longer eventually .

Comment by 3 String Blues on June 5, 2013 at 12:08pm: cool! you learn as you go along!

Comment by Uncle John on June 5, 2013 at 9:49am: Very nice work and gits. I've had the same problems and tried the same solution with strings and tail pieces.