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Permalink Reply by Ryan Rose on August 1, 2011 at 6:21am

Getting better and better. Nice work.

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Permalink Reply by Rand Moore on August 1, 2011 at 6:35am

Hi Terrill,

I looked over your photos and your builds seem pretty good to me. Maybe you have in mind some "beginning" CBGs built by folks who come from a wood working or luthier background who you are comparing your work against. Sure, their builds are going to look and sound really great. I got started a bit over a year ago and had absolutely no wood working experience, nor many tools. Yet after maybe a dozen builds I have built progressively better and better CBGs. Sure your first couple leave a lot to be desired. Just building the head and neck assembly, figuring how to mount 3 or 4 tuners on the head stock, and how to mount the neck onto the cigar box is a lot to learn in a first build, and because there are many different ways of doing most things, it will take you a dozen build before you get the hang of how to best build your guitars, given your circumstance. For instance, I live most the time in China, and my best source for good quality wood to build with is trim wood that's sold in 2.2 meter lengths and is 3cm wide by 0.5 cm thick. So, I have to build up my necks by laminating (gluing) together 6 or 7 long narrow slats of wood. I also don't have access to cigar boxes in China, so I have to build my own boxes from this same material, and then use 2mm thick plywood laminate for the sound board and back board. So my techniques for build instruments is much different than most other builders. Other factors that may cause your techniques and quality to vary include what tools you have to work with. If only hand tools, then your instruments will likely take longer to build and may not be as well fashioned as compared to those builders with a garage full of expensive power tools.

Also, if you come from a traditional guitar background, CBGs won't compare. What you should compare a CBG against is a el-cheapo canjo. If you have played a canjo, then come to CBGs, you'll think CBGs sound really great. That's how I got my start, and I have made quite a few CBGs, but have moved on to my own boxes. I think you have more control over instrument quality if you build your own boxes, and that may be a direction you will want to consider if CBGs don't sound good enough to you.

 

P.S. I like some of the ideas you did come up with. It shows that you are quite innovative. The bottle cork you use to provide a place to store your slide on that one CBG is a new idea, as is the idea of adding mass to the box to make the tone sound better. I think you are doing a good job so far, just hang in there and make incremental changes to your instruments, focusing on perfecting one or two "issues" with each build. The hobby is fairly inexpensive, and so experimentation is not so expensive. Just keep at it.

 

-Rand.

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