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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 Moritz Voegeli on April 3, 2017 at 7:05am

Which scale, which brand of strings? At first, which tuning with which string gauges? At second, same questions. Which kind of pickup?

For low tunings often acoustic steel strings are the better choice than electric ones, if you want to play with both acoustically and amplified.

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Permalink Reply by Rubén on April 3, 2017 at 9:37am

The scale is 25". At first also was tuned gdg the strings was 0.10, 0.14 and 0.22 I'm not sure about the brand.
Whith the second try, strings D'adario 3th, 4th and 5th from an acoustic pack 0.10 - 0.52 (I don't have the pack, so I don't know the exact gauges of those three strings) tuned GDg. I put a disc piezo under the bridge, inside the bowl. I always use acoustic strings because I like to play with the guitar plugged in, but also take the guitar and just play without anything else.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on April 3, 2017 at 10:12am

The smaller solid strings provide more tension on the nut and bridge and sustain better than the wound strings. This makes them provide more volume in a acoustic guitar and this is the reason that most acoustic guitars have a deep and large area sound chamber compared to a CBG.

Bigger wound strings just aren't going to make as much acoustic volume on a thin and small area acoustic chamber like a CBG.

You have remember that CBG's were made by poor musicians to mimic a guitar. They often made their own stings from screen doors, baling wire or the wire from brooms. All those wires were solid so they made more acoustic volume.

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Permalink Reply by Rubén on April 3, 2017 at 5:53pm

Thank you for your answer, I was starting to think that it was something wrong with the guitar.

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Permalink Reply by darryl kernaghan on April 3, 2017 at 12:24pm

Paul's advice makes a lot of sense, but also, some dog bowls are a little thicker than others and don't ring out as well especially with thicker wound strings, one thing that does help is a metal bridge with a smaller contact area on the bowl, ideally 1 small foot each end of the bridge or similar

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Permalink Reply by Rubén on April 3, 2017 at 5:58pm

The bridge is made of wood, maybe a metal bridge would help. Thank you for your answer.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on April 3, 2017 at 8:12pm

Don't be afraid to try different things, you'll stumble on to something great eventually.

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Permalink Reply by Moritz Voegeli on April 3, 2017 at 8:46pm

I tried to identify your D'Addario .010 to .052 string set: I suppose it's an electric Nickel Wound Light Top / Heavy Bottom set, and D'Addario's electrics are far from the best choice for acoustics...

When I'm not happy with low GDG tuning, with string gauges like .022 .030 .042, I try DAD tuning with string gauges .013 .017 .026 or the like

If available, bone or horn is often the best choice for a bridge. The resonators I have seen had biscuits of hard wood with a bridge of brass or bone.

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Permalink Reply by Rubén on April 3, 2017 at 11:56pm

The strings are acoustic, maybe the string gauges 0.10 - 0.52 are not correct, I don't have the pack here. The three strings are wounded. I'll try with a new bridge and see what happen, or I'll try that with my next guitar, this one looks nice this way and sounds awesome plugged in. Thank you all for taking a moment to answer.

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Permalink Reply by John Sawyer on April 6, 2017 at 11:50am

I use a banjo style bridge on my food bowl reso... the bottom is hollowed out on the edge of my belt sander, only the outer 1/4" edges are touching the metal....

The acoustic volume could also be that the dog bowl resonates better at the higher frequencies...

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Permalink Reply by Rubén on April 6, 2017 at 12:04pm

This has a banjo style bridge too, but it sits on the bowl with its three feet. I can try to remove the middle foot and see what happen. Thank you for your answer John.