three string cigar box guitar style electric guitar

I've been calling it the plank so far but I'm gonna rename it. Anyway it's more or less finished. Just a few cosmetic touches to add to make it a bit more interesting. It's a bit of an ugly, weird looking thing but it's a little cracker. I wanted it to look like it had been thrown together from bits and pieces but with a decent fretted neck and decent (non piezo) pickup so it plays and sounds real good. And it does. I fitted a cheap Ebay-bought humbucker and just a volume pot.nI'm well-pleased with it. Put through a distortion pedal it sounds real dirty and wicked. When i get time I'll take some decent photos and hopefully a vid to put on Youtube.

Life has been manic again for the last couple of months with a death and two hospitalised family members to visit, so it's an achievement that I managed to get anything done.

I haven't even told you about our 4th annual CBG fest at Manchester a few weeks ago have I? Call back in a short while and hopefully I'll have had time to post something here.

Back on the cigar box guitar wagon

It's been a while since I did much building  in the cigar box guitar world so i haven't written much here. Other things have taken priority for several months. One of those was building my own solid-body 6 string reso which I absolutely love. The knowledge gained from that has made me re-think my cbg building ideas. I really like playing with three strings in open tuning but want a bit more quality from my instrument than I previously had. I want frets and a decent sounding pickup now so my next build will have to incorporate those. I also decided I'd like to have a crack at making another conventional 6 stringer but on my own this time.

So I decided it will be a Les Paul junior - cos there cool and simple instruments. So I headed off to John Boddy timber yard to buy some wood and while I was there I found a small plank of pippy/burr oak. It has a swirly, knotty and cracked grain which is loved by wood turners for making decorative items. I figured it would make a cool solid-body, cigar box style, three stringer which would be a good practice project before attempting my LP junior. So that's me back in the land of CBGs (OK it's technically not a cigar box guitar but who cares - it'll fit in nicely with my collection and should sound and play damn fine).

I started on the body yesterday. Cut the plank down to a cigar box size first. The plank had a big curved crack in it, which I didn't mind, but when cut to size was going to leave a piece flapping about. I decided to let the wood dictate the shape of the body by hacking it off.  Then I hacked away with a gouge chisel all around the other sides to create a really rough looking plank and just lightly sanded it to take off the splinters. It now looks like a piece of driftwood. The wood has various ink stamped markings on it which I am leaving on. Next job is to make a template to route out a neck pocket. I think it'll have a single humbucker with a volume control and keep it really simple. I'll post a photo here soon.

guitar build update

Once again my apologies for taking so long to get back here. Still busy sorting out my departed uncle's affairs. Wow doesn't time fly. Well the guitar is 99% finished and I've been playing it for a few weeks now. I'm just waiting for the Highlander cone pickup to arrive. When it does I'll have to remove the strings, plate and cone. All the wiring is pretty much in place ready for it. At the same time I need to raise the action a little at the saddle end and fit some heavier strings. I fitted 12s but with the action as low as it is and the tuning dropped down to open D, there isn't enough tension on the strings for easy and clean slide work (which is what I mainly built it for). I've got some 15s - yes that's right 15s but that is pretty normal guage for slide players. I'm very happy about the guitar and still can't keep my eyes off it. I'll post some more deatils about the last few build sessions but for now I'll leave you with a (rather poor) photo of it. In reality it looks 10 times more beautiful.

guitar builds 10 - 13

Apologies for leaving you hanging for a while. We had a death in the family and that has taken over my life for the last 6 weeks. So here's a mini report of the last 4 sessions.

Session 10 - routed the cavities for the pots to go in the upper and lower bouts of the body.
Session 11 - routed channels from pot cavities to cone chamber for wiring, drilled hole for jack socket and drilled soundholes in back of body. made small blocks and glued them in the cone recess to support it at the correct height.
Session 12 - Fine sanded neck and body then rubbed thinned down nitro-cellulose lacquer into body (two coats to seal it) and about 6 coats on the bak of neck and headstock. Fine wire wool brought the neck up as smooth as a baby's bum - nah smoother.

Session 13 - one of the scariest - spray painting the body and headstock front. About 10 coast at 15 minutes intervals to build up a decent thickness. I was worried about my crappy spraying techinique causing nasty runs on the guitar and sure enough I managed it. Martin assured me it wasn't a problem as we'll rub it down flat before finally polishing it to a high gloss. seems hard to believe it possible but I've seen his finished results and have confidence it will all be fine.

guitar build session 9

Missed another week but last wednesday I was back in the workshop with Martin my luthier/tutor. More neck work. A slight radius was sanded on the fretboard surface. Next, the frets. Starting at the body end of the neck I cut pieces of fretwire allowing a couple of mm overhang. The pre-slotted slots were gently cleaned of sawdust with a fine saw blade. The fretwire was gentyl presses into the slot. Using a small hammer head as a sort of punch, with masking tape to cushion it, using a mallet, the frets were tapped into place starting at one end and working across the face to the other end then the surplus snipped off. The ends of the frets are prevented from springing up with a drop of superglue on the them which sort of gets sucked into the slot. The hammer head was used to apply pressure for about 30 seconds until the glue had set. When all fitted, a file was used to smooth the ends flush with the neck edge. Then running the file lengthways at an angle, a bevel was put on them. The rest of the session was used to further shape the back of the headstock. Photos to come later.

new music track

At last I've been able to do some recording again. Been so busy with making amps and stuff that music making has taken a back seat. I started a project with a pal a while ago. He sings in a band called The Choppers who are out in Cambodia. He had a song idea and we played around with some riffs and managed to knock out a punky/rocky/bluesy sort of number. Took a few takes and it's a bit rough and ready (as I like it). Two guitar tracks on it are played on one of my CBGs and the vocals were done through my ex-military bakelite headset mic - hence the thin sound quality of the vocals. I've put it upo on Soundcloud - here's the link if you want to listen to it.

http://soundcloud.com/smojomusic/mayday

guitar build session 8

Missed a week of building last week. This week it was all on the neck again. Final filing of neck back profile and sanding to a nice finish. Drilled out holes and installed the mother of pearl fret marker dots and edge dots. Drilled out holes for machine heads. Still a fair bit to do but I put the body and neck lossley together so I could see what it's looking like. Starting to get exciting now.

turning vintage radios into amplifiers

So as well as building a more conventional 6-stringer guitar, you might be pleased to hear about something more in line with cigar box mentality - i.e. taking something that was meant for another purpose and making it into something more fun and appropriate for making your own music. My latest adventure is taking old vintage radios from the 60s and 70s, hacking into the wiring, adding a 1/4 inch jack socket and turning it into a small amp. These things are so cool, why has it taken me so long to get into it? The older radios like these have a fairly decent power output. At half volume with a guitar plugged in they have a pretty clean sound but crank them up full and they overdrive nicely - rather like a small valve amp. Loud enough for your home and maybe enough to annoy the neighbours. They make great practise amps but just look so cool. I've done a few videos, take a look and see what you think. This one is a "keeper" though!

guitar build session 7

I'm a week behind posting this and this week I will not be doing any work on it. So last week was all about the neck again. The fretboard had been glued on so now needed trimming back to the neck profile using the router table and a small cutter with wheel guide following the shape of the neck. The body end of the neck cut to the correct length and shaped to fit the body "pocket". So now I could put it in place and see how the guitar is shaping up as a whole.

I spent the rest of the session roughing out the back of the neck. We drew lines down it at specific points as a guides to cut back to. Just using a spokeshave and a coarse rasp, I reduced the back of the neck to a sort of triangular profile. The ridge of that was taken off leaving a sort of flat topped triangular shape, then those two ridges taken down so we now have an approximate D shaped profile. I ended the session there. Doesn't sound much but it was four hours of hard graft. I reckon we might be about half way through the project now.

guitar build session 6

All about the neck this week. First job was to attach headstock template, then using a rasp bit in a table mounted router, to route the shape of the headstock around it. Then attach a straight edge template along one side of the neck and route that down to size, same with the other edge. Then some real hard work. To shape the back of the angled headstock roughly, I used a gouge chisel to chop away the surplus, then took it down to almost final shape using a hand rasp. Next we took a lot of the surplus off the back of the neck with an electric planer.

Next job was to route a narrow channel for the truss rod. Just wide and deep enough to take it with very little space around it. We put in the dual action rod then glued and clamped the fretboard in position. Doesn't sound a lot but it took the whole afternoon. Here's a photo just before we put fretboard on.