I reinforced the hell out of these suckers by bracing the corners and where the neck connects with the box. They should withstand the forces involved with any impact to another child's head.I don't think I care for using cabinet hinges. These especially seemed kind of flimsy. They should still hold up to the low tension of the strings.I learned that the convex sides complicate matters, especially in relation to the neck.
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...about the convex sides, yes definetely, moreover it seems to me it is looking better when used on the other side, just like what you built on the Luc's Ashton guitar.
Another trick to have the guitar sound louder is in the choice of the strings. For beginners I use classic guitar strings, or electro accoustic strings for advanced players, with strings being ADG strings, so they are usually easier to tune to GDG. If you happen to have to play when the whole house is sleeping, like when you woke up in the middle of the night with the melody of the century just in your mouth and you have to play it NOW before you forget, I suggest nylon strings made from fishing lines, I use 0.60 and 0.50 and 0.40 (don't over stress them when tuning so they can do their very best) :-)
Hey guys.
The spacing of the frets look screwy because I didn't install all of them, only the ones used in the major scale. So I installed frets "0" (the nut), 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 12 (an octave above 0), then repeated the pattern. The smallest guitar actually has the most frets because its small box isn't intruding onto the neck so much.
The sound holes are grommets from Lowes, and the holes themselves measure about 1cm (half an inch to us on the English system). I'd read somewhere here that sound holes for these boxes only need to be about the size of a quarter, so that how I arrived at these particular grommets. They may still be too large for the smallest box though, and therefore contributing to deadening the sound.
LittleBigOne, thanks for the tension tip. I haven't sold any guitars yet but I'd be happy too.
...I just looked at the holes and they seems to be 1cm, I noticed it exists some smaller ones about half the size of yours, and maybe one of them would have been enough ... Also about the tension of the strings on the neck, I found a trick that is to drill holes above the nut and have the strings going through them. Your mechanics will then be reversed and the tension will be much much less ; This trick is explained here in details :-)
Hi Larry I like their look a lot too ! Most of the time the loss of bass or loss of sound come from too much holes or too large holes compared to the size of the box. Because with cigar box guitar we have to deal with small size, many people don't take care enough of the ears of the guitar and just drill holes because it looks nice, but when you do the math with appropriate formulas you can see the holes should be much much smallers... also you can increase sound by placing the bridge in the middle of plate area, though it might not look as good it is the best place to get a louder sound. I have hard time to find so nice boxes in my country and your builds look really great :D do you sell some guitars by the way ?
Really like these Larry!
And I like the look of the cabinet hinge at the bridge. I would like to know how you arrived at those fret positions though. I am about to start on my first build and have downloaded a fret positioning scale calculator, but it looks nothing like what you have there.
Thanks,'Zilla. I finished the largest one first and I was pretty surprised how nice it sounded. It has kind of a throaty bass sound with a lot of reverb and is kind of buzzy, like it has a hint of sitar in it. The smallest one has a similar sound but not as bassy, as I'd expect. I have to say I'm a bit disappointed with the sound of the middle one. Its sound is a little dead. Remember, the scales are 19.5" and I'm sure that effects the sound quality a lot.
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Another trick to have the guitar sound louder is in the choice of the strings. For beginners I use classic guitar strings, or electro accoustic strings for advanced players, with strings being ADG strings, so they are usually easier to tune to GDG. If you happen to have to play when the whole house is sleeping, like when you woke up in the middle of the night with the melody of the century just in your mouth and you have to play it NOW before you forget, I suggest nylon strings made from fishing lines, I use 0.60 and 0.50 and 0.40 (don't over stress them when tuning so they can do their very best) :-)
The spacing of the frets look screwy because I didn't install all of them, only the ones used in the major scale. So I installed frets "0" (the nut), 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 12 (an octave above 0), then repeated the pattern. The smallest guitar actually has the most frets because its small box isn't intruding onto the neck so much.
The sound holes are grommets from Lowes, and the holes themselves measure about 1cm (half an inch to us on the English system). I'd read somewhere here that sound holes for these boxes only need to be about the size of a quarter, so that how I arrived at these particular grommets. They may still be too large for the smallest box though, and therefore contributing to deadening the sound.
LittleBigOne, thanks for the tension tip. I haven't sold any guitars yet but I'd be happy too.
And I like the look of the cabinet hinge at the bridge. I would like to know how you arrived at those fret positions though. I am about to start on my first build and have downloaded a fret positioning scale calculator, but it looks nothing like what you have there.