Its been a long time coming but I'm very happy with the result. Thanks to everyone on the Nation without all that wonderful inspiration and input of ideas and techniques there is no way I would have built it.
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Thanks E D and James....I have now fretted it and lowered the action against Uncle Johns suggestion. I tend to work on the maxim art is never finished just abandoned & you learn so much along the way. will do vid soonish...
Sorry Uncle John forgot to answer you. It sounds very mellow...cushioning the Piezo in a bed of silicon and having it under the saddle really worked. Once its fretted and I get some practice (lol) I'll post a vid. I have medium guage bronze wound strings on it. .042 = G, .032 = D, .024=g.
Thanks rand, I'm not a slide player yet. if you check out my pictures I made a bone slide so give it a try. But the action has been lowered now. Part of the reason was having the Piezo on top of the box and the saddle and the other was I buggered up the depth of the head and the tuning pegs suck out too much... lol. but I have modified that now.
My first CBG that I bought was fretless and I fretted that about a year ago and yep used an electric tuner to get the right tunings. I love the idea of electrical wire cause it was a bit hit and miss last time I did it and thank gawd for car bog and that the neck was painted. Yeah I'd love to have a fret saw - cause getting a coping saw fine enough is very hard. Yeah I think fretting is the most nerve wracking part...
Next time you might want to add frets, and an easy thing to use for first time frets are tie-wraps (the kind electricians use to dress up their wiring, etc.). I use the thinnest kind for the frets and a medium sized one for the nut. The nice things about tie-wraps for frets is that you can easily move them up and down the neck, and even tune them with your electronic tuner. It is a good way to get some experience with making your first fretted instrument. However, these days I use real fret wire when I can get it. Using a fret calculator like Stew-Mac and following instructions covered in many other threads here on CBN, you should be able to figure out how to do it. I use a coping saw instead of a fret saw, but that's only because that's all I have. You'll find you don't have to bee extremely accurate with fret placement to get an instrument that sounds good. And leraning to do great fret jobs comes only with practice (something I'm still working on). Well happy building...
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Thanks rand, I'm not a slide player yet. if you check out my pictures I made a bone slide so give it a try. But the action has been lowered now. Part of the reason was having the Piezo on top of the box and the saddle and the other was I buggered up the depth of the head and the tuning pegs suck out too much... lol. but I have modified that now.
My first CBG that I bought was fretless and I fretted that about a year ago and yep used an electric tuner to get the right tunings. I love the idea of electrical wire cause it was a bit hit and miss last time I did it and thank gawd for car bog and that the neck was painted. Yeah I'd love to have a fret saw - cause getting a coping saw fine enough is very hard. Yeah I think fretting is the most nerve wracking part...
Nice first build. I guess you are a slide player?
Next time you might want to add frets, and an easy thing to use for first time frets are tie-wraps (the kind electricians use to dress up their wiring, etc.). I use the thinnest kind for the frets and a medium sized one for the nut. The nice things about tie-wraps for frets is that you can easily move them up and down the neck, and even tune them with your electronic tuner. It is a good way to get some experience with making your first fretted instrument. However, these days I use real fret wire when I can get it. Using a fret calculator like Stew-Mac and following instructions covered in many other threads here on CBN, you should be able to figure out how to do it. I use a coping saw instead of a fret saw, but that's only because that's all I have. You'll find you don't have to bee extremely accurate with fret placement to get an instrument that sounds good. And leraning to do great fret jobs comes only with practice (something I'm still working on). Well happy building...
-Rand.