Getting better acoustic tone and volume - some things I've learned

My first cbg was a three string made from a really cool Niles and Moser Chancellor box. I think I built it in an afternoon.   Against the odds it worked, stayed in tune and was fairly playable - if you ignored the biting fret ends.  Since then I’ve built about 20 or so and like the first, each has presented me with questions or problems that prompted construction of the next. 

Once my awe with the original cbg waned and I started to see it with a critical eye I was bothered by the lack of acoustic output.  I built 3 or 4 the same way and all of them were pretty much useless without an amp.  That (and the historical work by Speal and McNair) got me thinking about the sound of cbgs 150 years ago.  Clearly they were doing something quite different from what I was doing, since they seemed to have produced a useful instrument that didn't rely on electrical amplification.  I wanted to know how you could get enough volume and a pleasing tonal quality out of a cigar box without the pickup. 

At the outset I was convinced that at least part of the answer lay in the difference between the cigar box as it is now and as it was in the past.  Somewhere I had heard that cedar’s natural pest deterrence and delightful smell made it the wood of choice for cigar boxes.  Well, that certainly wasn’t the case with the cigar boxes I had found.  They seemed to be paper and very little wood that I could identify other than plywood.  I surmised that older boxes were likely made of solid wood and more often than not that wood was cedar.   I had installed enough cedar shingles and had seen some pretty sweet sounding classical guitars with cedar tops to realize that red cedar is very lively: roof shingles dropped onto a hard surface are almost musical. Okay so that was my “cave man” moment and I started to build my own boxes and tops in an effort to recreate what I thought was the character of an old time cigar box. 

The first of these non-cigar box, cigar box guitars (?) was built on a cigar box with the original lid removed and replaced with cedar from my most likely source – left over cedar roof shingles.  Planing a roof shingle to consistent thickness and still getting enough useable length meant the top roughed out pretty thin.  I surmised that it was too thin to take the downward force of the strings and should therefore be braced in some way (later experiments have proven this).  I adapted a ladder shaped brace from a mandolin kit I had built using ½ inch by ¼ inch cedar stock.  Once I got it all together and set it up I found I had built a reasonably worthy acoustic instrument and ultimately had the answer to my question – the soundboard wood really matters, thickness matters, ie it must be thin enough to resonate and produce volume and tone and finally you've got to brace the thin soundboard from underneath as luthiers have been doing forever.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that the answer to my question was available via a non-experimental route (the collective expertise of luthiers)– but what fun is that.

The real test of usefulness of the aforementioned principles came when I found the ultimate cigar box.  The box is a made entirely from cedar and originally contained Pandora cigars (circa 1940?).  I planed the top thin and braced it.  It is a small 5 by 9 by 2 ½ inch box.  I didn’t expect much volume but I was hoping for some sweet tone.  I wasn’t disappointed – the tone was very nice and the volume quite a bit greater than expected.  It is a fine (to my ear at least) acoustic instrument that I could play around a campfire without an amp. Of course I put piezos in it and I can run it through an amp and rock out too...
The top..thinned and braced - further experiments with braces seem to suggest very little change in the tone if these braces are refined and shaped. I know that luthiers discuss the role of brace pattern and profile at length and they can probably hear the nuances.  However,  the big gains seem to come from "thin and braced"no matter how clumsily.  As an added note I think gluing the braces to the sides of the box can result in acoustic dampening.  In one case where I extended braces to glue into slots on the box sides, the result was a dead sounding instrument.  I may be mistaken, but I think its important to be sure that the soundboard is allowed to vibrate as freely as possible.Finished Pandora's Box

And, by the way neck wood takes a close second for imparting tone - there is a real distinction between a red oak neck (very bright sounding) and the more mellow hemlock necks I prefer to use.

Check out the audio file - ..Pandora.mp3

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Comment by Robert Stapleton on November 2, 2015 at 4:08pm

Oh. Not meant for Macs. Dang.

Comment by john w on November 2, 2015 at 3:37pm

The audio file works with windows media player...

Comment by Robert Stapleton on November 2, 2015 at 1:35pm

Very interesting. I'd love to hear the audio file but I can't find any program that will open a .ga file. Can you tell me what file format that is? Even a wave form editor won't open it.

Thanks,

Rob

Comment by Lane Martin on October 30, 2015 at 3:58am

Nice build. Thanks for the insight on tops/bracing. Love the soundhole pattern.

Comment by Pickedmoor Jon on October 26, 2015 at 8:46am

Nice post JW and some really useful comments from others, I will look at this in the future when I have finished my first build! I have been learning so much from you guys and I have started my instrument but pressure of my day job (lots of overtime) and other home projects (I'm building a vertical panel saw) have made it hard to continue with this. The woods you talk about are available over here in blighty but you have to pay through the nose for them so I will look at alternatives for local woods. Cheers for now, keep on chipping away

Comment by Paul Craig on October 26, 2015 at 8:27am

Just started a build with a cedar fence plank 5/8" x 5 1/2" x 60" for $2.55 at Lowe's. 1 Plank was enough for a 7" x 9" box body. It's green, so it's going in the oven to quick dry.

Comment by Ben "C. B. Gitty" Baker on October 26, 2015 at 4:01am

John, thank you for sharing this great article. It is well-written, detailed and full of great knowledge. This is precisely the sort of thing that helps make Cigar Box Nation the great resource it is, and I very much appreciate you sharing it here.

Comment by Nathan Binns on September 9, 2015 at 5:26pm

I decided instead of replying to your questions John, I just made a blog post of my own. I just kind of guessed at where to put bracings based on what looked "right" and from looking at different patterns from google image search. So far they're strong enough. 

Comment by Paul Craig on September 9, 2015 at 9:23am

Sounds great. Don't have many choices of wood around here and didn't think of wooden roof shingles.

Comment by john w on September 9, 2015 at 6:16am

Nathan - if you do go with roof shingles no.1 grade is best (there are three grades)  -  they have no knots.  Like you I have used a lot of found wood for my guitars.  In fact most of my necks are either offcuts from my kitchen reno project (hemlock) or the former newel posts on my staircase (red oak).  I managed to get my hands on some sitka spruce panels from my local plywood shop (?) and they made fine tops.  Have you posted pictures of your soundboards - would love to see them.  What sort of brace pattern have you used?

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