Loudness Versus Scale Length

The first CanJo I saw was abt 3-4 years ago my first impression was that they were not very loud.

  If you were in a noisy room you could hardly hear it.

I saw and played one in early Sept this year with a hollowed out piece of wood abt 3-4" in diameter using a canning jar (large) lid at the end as the bridge, Gosh this thing was LOUD! I took pictures and just recently have made more canjoS similar to this, they also turned out louder than the first ones I made.

  The scale length may be the reason for being louder as I made a mistake on one so it ended up being a 17" scale length. This one was almost tooooooo loud!

  The first wooden ones had an 18.5" scale length and were much louder than the original 22" canjoS

So the next thing I did was to put a wooden CAN on a 22" scale length stick it didn't seem any louder than a regular tin can.

So IMHO I believe the shorter scale length does make for a LOUDER canjo.

As time permits I will post some picS of the Wooden CanjoS.

You need to be a member of Cigar Box Nation to add comments!

Join Cigar Box Nation

Email me when people reply –

Replies

  • Randal, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it. :)>

    • Yes yes!

  • Randal, that's a great looking 'Jo whatever you call it!

    • Thomas the only problem is that it takes time to carve out the piece of wood I drill out a few holes with a 1/2" drill then take a gouge and mallet and beat the %$#@@#$ out of it and next use a spindle sander to finish the inside. the outside is shaped with a belt sander, they are LOUD!

  • Wouldn't a wooden can be a barrel? Hence if you build a canjo with a wooden can shouldn't it be a barreljo? Just trying to clarify the concept. :)>

    • Yep I believe you are correct to call them a BarrelJO,

      I'll send up a few quick pics I just took.305917377?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024305918486?profile=RESIZE_1024x1024

    • That is too cool.

      This gets me to thinking PVC pipe would pretty much do the same. The does the depth of the can part make much of a difference?

      Corbie would like to know

    • Well I did make another wooden one which was much smaller in Diameter and it was not near as loud, it also was deeper. All I can say for sure is I made abt 8 of the large wooden canJOs and all of them are quite a bit louder than the smaller Diameter ones.

      All of the large wooden ones I made are all the same diameter and close to the same length.

      IMHO My first guess is that the shorter canS are louder, I haven't done enough testing to be sure.

  • Randal, I am literally about to build some tonight. Sure could use a photo or two to better understand what you're describing! Thanks, -Glenn
This reply was deleted.