sound (3)
I recently was with a group with the State of TN starting a new initiative. After a week long series of training was over we were to make an Action Plan for our District.
Right off the bat someone in my group shouted "I'm really interested in [such and such]. I thought "really, that is a project, not a process; it has nothing to do with an Action Plan". A plan was to help state agencies work together to prepare clients to be received by non-profit orginizations so they could finalize sucessful reentry for these people into society.
Well we ended up selecting three projects - but no cohesive plan emerged. No wonder the State does not work any better than it does. There really was no cohesivenness between these three projects though all were great stand alone and excellent outcomes. Yes they were needed items of business that may have been goals of a plan, but they now had scuttled the chance to form a process that moved agency through agency into the non-profit orginazations to provide seemless service.
I look at my last build. I wanted to build a certain way, build a four stringer, fretless, and had some design features I wanted to try. The results was pretty good. Then I look at the really good stuff on the Net. Why doesn't mine look and sound like that? It dawned on me. I put a lot of projects together. I want a fret board like that, the box/neck connection like that, this number of strings so the neck needs to be this wide, this many pickups so lets find a schematic, need sound holes these look snazzy, borrow them, and then mix it together and after all these projects get done I should have a CBG.
Is that really making an action plan before we start building - just asking? Any opinions? If we are aiming to build that CBG with the greatest appeal soundwise, appearance wise, and playability wise: what does a real CBG building plan to produce quality in appearance, playability, and sound look like? What should we have in place, how much should we prepared in what areas, what is it important to have precicely worked out before even starting, how organic can we allow ourselves to be and in what areas? Where can we be sloppy and where must we be right to that silly millimeter?
Opinions, experience, your personal process or preferance, feedback, referances, any contribution welcome!
This is a cool one i built for a friend who is a well respected melodian musician here in Vancouver. His name is John Krieger. He wanted me to tweak it a bit and put a double octave string for the high strings and have a strum stick fretting on it. It turned out nice and sounded really beautiful. I used a nice Punch box i found in San Diego on a business trip and piece of Mahogany for the neck. The sound holes are decorated with some cool antique napkin holders i found at a flea market. I don't have any video of how it sounded unfortunatly but i was pleased with its volume and tone.
Here is another angle of it. The cool stand was made by my father who makes guitar stands, hardwood guitar picks, dulcimers, Psaltery's and other cool folk instruments.
