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Permalink Reply by Rand Moore on July 19, 2011 at 11:06am

Hi Jake,

 

The "bigger is better" rule generally holds true for regular full sized guitars as it does for cigar box guitars. However, certain metals and certain shapes perform better than others. For instance aluminum and brass resonators work better than stainless steel because the material is lighter (less dense). A resonator that presents a parabolic (concave) surface to the source of sound waves will reflect them better than other shapes. The better resonator are usually cones made (spun) specifically for this purpose as opposed to most metal things (just about everything including the kitchen sink) people employ as home made resonators. For a full size guitar you are talking about a 11" or 12" cone as opposed to the 5" resonator cones usually used on cigar box guitars. However, adding electronics (piezo and/or magnetic pickups ("pups") ) can make a not so go performing resonator sound really great, and the tone may be quite unique. Some of the builders use both a piezo and a magnetic pickup with their reso guitars (cigar box and otherwise) and provide switches so you can play with one or the other or both. There are quite a few discussions on this topic on CBN, so you might want to use CBN's build in search engine to search for more threads to study this topic more thoroughly before you start your build.

 

Hope this helps.

 

-Rand.