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Permalink Reply by the anonymous pick on April 6, 2013 at 2:50am

hey rich ..  this was actually   asked      before  in the form of  glueing  the   neck to  the top   or allowing a  gap .

  everyone  that   has  tried  both ways   said they could not tell the  difference  , or   the neck glued to  the  top  actually  sounded better  . 

so  that  should answer  your question  .  ;-) 

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Permalink Reply by Rich on April 6, 2013 at 4:06am

Cheers, I will check that post out.

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Permalink Reply by Bluesheart on April 6, 2013 at 3:43am

Well, I tried one of the "Crow Style" builds where you bolt the neck on top of the box with a wood brace inside. It has a much quieter acoustic tone that my other builds where I leave a 1/8 -1/4" gap between the neck inside and the top. If you are going to amp it, I don't think there is any difference but for acoustic volume, I vote for letting the box top resonate. The back makes a difference too. Acoustic instruments like violins and guitars use a hard dense wood for the back to help project the sound forward. Keeping the back of a cigar box guitar away from your body will help with volume and tone also. I like to strip out any paper or velvet from the inside too so there are only hard surfaces inside.

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Permalink Reply by Bluesheart on April 6, 2013 at 3:44am

ps , leaving the gap is a lot of extra work but I think it is worth it.

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Permalink Reply by Rich on April 6, 2013 at 4:40am

Thanks for the reply, I agree that leaving a gap between the lid and the neck would work better. I was having a look at how standard guitars are built and I see that they use different forms of bracing not just for structural purposes but also for sound quality. I was wondering if putting two braces at the front and rear of the box and letting the neck float on these would help with sound transfer. I guess it depends on the box as well.

I see a lot of cigar box guitar builds where they have worked really hard to make a beautiful box with many sound holes, f-hole and then just mic it up with loads of distortion and I was thinking what´s the point of all that work. I´m not trying to put people down but I would like my guitars to be able to hold their own without all that extra stuff.

I was also thinking of trying to build a distorted sound into the box (if you know what I mean). Some of the early African modifications of the guitar use beer caps or bits of metal to add distortion.

Guess I will just have to try it out. Good to talk about it though.

Thanks

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Permalink Reply by the Fred on April 6, 2013 at 6:19am

A silly aside about homemade distortion, I wrote out a song on a post-it recently and stuck it to my guitar to read while playing.  Well, at one point the post-it got bent and started resting gently against the strings.  It made a really cool fuzz distortion sound I then started playing with.  Talk about cheap effects!  It reminded me that I read once that old blues players would use tinfoil and what not to dirty their sound.  I always wondered how but I think now I get it.

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Permalink Reply by Slowpaw Steve T on April 8, 2013 at 2:58am

I tried all ways of doing this, for electric guitar i now glue mount the neck and glue on a bar made of spare neck wood or pine glued to the bottom of the box at just the correct height, with only the fret board 5-6mm thickness above the height of the box (sometimes needs spacers) with a thin sliver of wood the same thickness as the lid removed from the neck below the lid - no gap -  flat pickup mounted on the box anywhere along the box is ok but has a warmer sound as you go towards the neck end. The neck goes through the back of the box where the strings are anchored, the floating bridge being about 1/4 of the way along the box lid, works great every time!  The name of the game for me is light but very rigid. (-:

For acoustic only the build needs a completely different approach, allowing a chamber beneath the sound hole and a larger box, made one or two of these with some success.

 

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