This is so ramblingly full of thoughts inspired by Dustin's tone-killin' thread, I thought it might be rudely thread-stealing to post it as a response...so I'll make it standalone...do what y'all like with it...I'm not really a blogger, but it's pretty much a rambling monologue i found interesting...who knows if anyone else will (man, it's sounding more and more like a blog)...
know 'they're just cigar boxes', but they're invested with a lot of effort and they do create a lot of music...the sum is = to more than the parts.
I like the haphazard/anything goes/what rules?/ etc. element of CBG building, but there's a point where one wants the effort invested to pay off (I get tired of making mistakes), and a little how/why (short of science, if you prefer) a particular part or construction method does or doesn't work is really useful to me, and maybe others. I'm not talking about over-engineering a recycled cigar box, but understanding how best to recycle things and have them be functional. Common sense and intuition do not work for me as they do for many others for whom mechanical things come easily...quite the opposite :O) I think we can agree that cigar boxes adapted to musical instruments had some common sense involved - certain physical properties suit string instruments, other suit percussion because - the laws of physics are there to analyze the how and why, but aren't essential. Similar to a comment a teacher said to me, that music theory only exists so particular music can be analyzed and thus understood for use or alteration by someone else...the music itself 'just is'...
Re: Wes' (and Diane's?) comments on minimal body contact with the CBG body (back): I'm reminded of T-Bone Walker and maybe Charlie Christian too...if you find old videos of T-Bone (no cigar boxes, however) on Youtube, he played his archtop guitars closer to horizontal than vertical, kind of 'tethered' by the strap, lifting away from his body. I read somewhere that this came from the acoustic archtop days where the pre-electric big band guitarist needed all the volume he could get. They played away from their body to let the guitar body resonate, as it was supposed to. The electric ones were prone to feedback. Laminate tops, back, sides etc. came to be looked down on by purists who said carved top was better, but people like Tal Farlow gave the laminate/ply top(and back, if applicable) instruments credibility, as the electric sound was their goal, and specifically the laminated ones were a hack of a lot less prone to feedback....as stated by another poster earlier in this thread, the functionality of the body is pretty fundamental - for an acoustic instrument, you need the resonances to be musically agreeable; for an electric, you don't care quite as much, and some people don't care at all about acoustic properties-just no feedback, please.
I think the tone hole size limitation is probably inherently related to how small a volume a cigar box has compared to say, an acoustic guitar, and how small the top/bottom of the CBG is.
A luthier friend asked me if I knew why there were 'f-holes' in a violin (our conversation was about violins, but not limited to just violins)... I said, 'um, to let the sound out?' He said the body is a resonator or 'sound box' and not just to provide the needed length for the strings - the top and bottom are essentially pumping air. The holes are to relieve the pressure which would otherwise constrain the resonance and ability of the violin to make a usable amount of sound. I don't think anyone wants to start doing Chladni plate resonance analysis on cigar boxes, (the tuning of the resonances of the selected wood pieces and finished instrument), but I'll bet the placement of the holes matters as well as the size. I took an acoustics class in 1976 on a whim and recently read a chapter on musical instruments we didn't cover in the course. It talks about how (ideally) the wood resonance (on a 'real' instrument,) and the 'air resonance' of the cavity and openings are placed and staggered for certain fundamentals and overtones (be it tuned to, or placed above/below).
I know, what does all that krap have to do with 'just doing it' with cigar boxes? Evidently certain construction practices knock the functionality of the box resonance too far out of range from where the box 'works'. Maybe it's not so much that brass eyelets are a problem, but where they are placed, and having a mass of brass greater than the mass of the wood just ain't gonna work...and a tone hole that occupies a disproportionate fraction of the surface area of the box top probably imparts a pretty drastic change from a very small hole...which only needs to be as large as necessary to serve its function, and not placed in a 'wrong' place...wherever that is. 'Wrong' place or size means it has 'worn out it's welcome'...it no longer serves a role as a 'catalyst' for body/air resonance when it actually inhibits or 'kills' it. I'll guess that a significant reduction in wood area/mass changes not only the resonant frequency but the vibration 'mode'. Maybe the 'finger tap' test before a hole is cut, followed by retest after tone hole surgery, followed by retest after insertion of the desired decorative item would allow one to figure out what (if anything) goes wrong...
I like the idea of side-placed holes...the sides appear to my brand of common sense as less critical regarding resonance...'modern' string instruments have some pretty oddly located holes these days...I saw a guitar on the web that not only had a hole on top visible only to the player, it also had a sliding door to allow 'open' vs. 'closed' (and I guess points in between, but the two extremes probably are the obvious reason for the option).
I find the gypsy Maccaferri guitars interesting and one of my CBG's yearns to at least look like one, if not sound like one...interesting how there was a huge D-shaped hole model (apparently with a problematic resonator), as well as a tiny little oval-hole one...leads one to assume it isn't that critical...
Resonator Ramblings: 'Not a lot of metal' is an interesting concept when one starts thinking about resonators...yeah, the cones have to be thin...a hunk of cast iron won't work.... here's a thought I'll probably never follow up on because other ideas will come along. I'd like to try whatever size loudspeaker will fit inside a cigar box as a resonator cone...a big magnet is a problem for size and weight, maybe knock the magnet off with a hammer...but idea part B is to use the largest loudspeaker with the smallest magnet that will fit the box, and see what kind of signal the voice coil itself produces as a pickup...probably not a lot, but hey, why not? They make paper, polymer and even metal cones these days, but the more robust ones probably accompany massive frame and magnet structures...
I saw some silver-plated copper dessert plates in a thrift store today, a good 8, 10 or a dozen for only $4.99 which I didn't have with me...I thought they have potential for...I don't know, something...maybe to place a floating bridge on (bottom of plate facing the strings), and suspended above the body by 3 (sounds like a good idea as 3 legged stools don't rock) items (ball bearings or those little 3/16" threaded studs on computer connectors-I've discarded countless ones) to let the plate resonate with the strings if the plate wants to...and the upside-down plate might give some archtop 'bow' that's agreeable to a trapeze-type tailpiece.
Murray
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Good enough for Gretsch, so good enough for me.