My very first… great deep sound & a lot of fun to build – but lots of beginner issues: bad intonation, fret buzz & a slight bend in the neck…4 string, open F, wooden archive box, beech neck and stained beech fretboard, thumbtack fretdots, bone nut, bridge made out of a broken banjo bridge and a piece of scrapwood.
Read more…
Yeah, I might change out the neck at some point. Even thought about turning this big box into a bass... Another thing I learned building this first guitar: Do not glue where it isn't necessary! Makes it a lot easier to fix stuff afterwards if you use screws instead! I now screw my necks into the boxes...
It's not that hard to change out the neck. I'd cut the fretboard off the neck with my razor saw and make a new neck for her. Use quarter sawn oak or poplar or maple and you'll have a big box beauty. Since it's your addiction it would be a "fix".
Thanks, Gary and Uncle John! Yeah, turning it into a slide guitar would probably be the way to go. I'm a lousy slide player though. The good thing is that I learned so much building this one that my second one turned out a lot better. (How do I embed pics from another of my albums here by the way? I want to boast...) After hours of fiddling with bridge compensation it has perfect intonation, the action is as good as on my beautiful Seagull acoustic, and it's so much fun to play that I haven't touched my "real" guitar for a while. The only problem is that this really is an addiction! Even though I actually don't have time to either build or play guitars I have plans for at least three more builds in my head... and a pile of boxes and lumber lying around... and I even started thinking about trussrods so I could eventually build a 6 string... I guess I'm seriously hooked.
If you do go slide.... at page top under 'resources', hover and click on 'how to play' then find and watch knotlenny's CBG 101. That video got me and many others going.
Ha! Looks like we were all on the same page about your fret buzz! That's an awesome box, by the way! Uncle John's suggestion to make it into a great slider is a solid idea as well! Slide play is pretty cool!
Thanks, Uncle John! The big mistake was using beech wood: it's cheap, hard and quite pretty - but it bends way to easily... I thought about raising bridge and nut. But since build #2 turned out very, very playable and there are more guitars I plan to build I guess this poor thing will just be collecting dust for a while. It will look great doing that though. And it will always wear a badge of honor for being my first build...
It looks fantastic and I thought it would have big deep sound. This is a very ambitious and complicated first build. If you can not fix the fret buzz - and you probably can not fix the neck bend, I would advise raising the saddle and nut as needed and having an excellent slide guitar.
Comments
Yeah, I might change out the neck at some point. Even thought about turning this big box into a bass... Another thing I learned building this first guitar: Do not glue where it isn't necessary! Makes it a lot easier to fix stuff afterwards if you use screws instead! I now screw my necks into the boxes...
Hey, and I watched Knotlenny's video now. Great stuff! - But for that I'd have to build myself a fretless 3 string... As I said: Badly addicted!
Thanks, Gary and Uncle John! Yeah, turning it into a slide guitar would probably be the way to go. I'm a lousy slide player though. The good thing is that I learned so much building this one that my second one turned out a lot better. (How do I embed pics from another of my albums here by the way? I want to boast...) After hours of fiddling with bridge compensation it has perfect intonation, the action is as good as on my beautiful Seagull acoustic, and it's so much fun to play that I haven't touched my "real" guitar for a while. The only problem is that this really is an addiction! Even though I actually don't have time to either build or play guitars I have plans for at least three more builds in my head... and a pile of boxes and lumber lying around... and I even started thinking about trussrods so I could eventually build a 6 string... I guess I'm seriously hooked.
If you do go slide.... at page top under 'resources', hover and click on 'how to play' then find and watch knotlenny's CBG 101. That video got me and many others going.
Ha! Looks like we were all on the same page about your fret buzz! That's an awesome box, by the way! Uncle John's suggestion to make it into a great slider is a solid idea as well! Slide play is pretty cool!
Thanks, Uncle John! The big mistake was using beech wood: it's cheap, hard and quite pretty - but it bends way to easily... I thought about raising bridge and nut. But since build #2 turned out very, very playable and there are more guitars I plan to build I guess this poor thing will just be collecting dust for a while. It will look great doing that though. And it will always wear a badge of honor for being my first build...
It looks fantastic and I thought it would have big deep sound. This is a very ambitious and complicated first build. If you can not fix the fret buzz - and you probably can not fix the neck bend, I would advise raising the saddle and nut as needed and having an excellent slide guitar.