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Setting up another license plate resonator

The sides of the box are 1x3 clear pine. I have learned to build the box about 1/2" larger than the license plate s that when you are playing it your hand doesn't rest on the metal edge of the plate, it's too uncomfortable.

The neck is an oak 1x2. Its fretted on a 25" scale. In order to accommodate the resonator the neck is cut down before going fully through the box and it is terminated with an oak 1x2 cross member. Seems to be plenty strong enough on my last build, and I've seen others here do the same.

The bottom of the box was hogged our with a dremel to make room for the output jack and volume knob, and the back of the box was made from a scrap of mahogany door skin I was given by a friend.

So far, so good.

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Comment by Greg Potts on April 3, 2013 at 1:48pm: This pic shows how I drilled and tapped the side of the 1/4-20 acorn nut to accept a 1/8-32 bolt into the side of it, which is used to fasten the bowl, pickup and license plate to the bridge. It seems to work pretty well so far.

Comment by Greg Potts on April 3, 2013 at 12:42pm: The bowl is bolted to the bridge through two holes drilled in the plate. I tap holes in the side of the nuts that hold the bolt used for the bridge. Setting it up is pretty fussy, you have to get the intonation sorted out ahead of time before drilling the holes in the plate.

I will post a pic of the bridge in this thread so you can get a better idea what I mean.

Comment by Rouxdy Blues on April 3, 2013 at 1:17am: Nice job!

BTW, most of my old licence plates have lots of holes in them!

How do you mount the bowl? Glue?

Comment by Greg Potts on March 24, 2013 at 1:57pm: Next step will be to drill and tap the holes for the license plate bolts, then calculate where the bridge needs to go, and drill the corresponding holes in the license plate and the resonator. That's probably the most nerve-wracking part of the whole process, as you only get one chance to drill through a 50 year old license plate.

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