Tuesday 20 November 2012

ShonKybox Tenor guitar

Here is my Tenor guitar made from an Aurora Preferidos cigar box.
This was a nice big cigar box and I wanted to make an instrument that would benefit from the volume.
Unfortunately I had to lose the lovely artwork as it had an MDF lid which doesn't make the best soundboard so I thought I would make my first tone wood topped instrument. I got  some Cedar of a seller on Ebay. Why cedar and not spruce? I have made a few CBG's out of boxes with cedar lids and I love the tone. whether spruce would be much different I don't know.
The neck is made fom my dwindling pile of exotic wood offcuts from a retiring wood turner. I don't know what wood type it is but it has similar grain and structure to the wenge which I used for the fingerboard.
I made extensive efforts to make the top reverberate and keeping the rest of the box still. recent CBG's and my last ukulele had the problem of the whole box sounding rather than just the top thus when resting against the players body muffling the sound of the guitar. The trouble is the top is generally thicker and stiffer than the the rest of the box particularly the back which is usually made from very thin wood.
I ladder braced the back and X braced the top.
Instead of having the neck going through it is attached via a tenon joint to allow the whole of the body to be an open space. I don't know anyone else doing this with CBG's.
The rest of the box is re-enforced along the inner corners and around the neck joint to provide stability.
The end result is a great sounding instrument. Better than I expected. The bracing has worked beautifully. No muffling. The top rings out with a clear crisp tone and extraordinary volume.
I have tuned this standard Tenor tuning (GDAE) with the correct gauge strings from Clifford Essex Music which unlike most CBG's is suitable for folk rather than Blues.
Now available on the ShonKy website

Here's the pics and Spec.

Specification:
Body: Aurora Preferidos cigar box, Cedar tone wood x braced top.
Neck: Unknown exotic hardwood.
Fingerboard: Wenge.
Dot markers: Wenge and Aluminium
Bridge: Australian Walnut.
Nut: Brass and Paduak.
Tuning machines: Gold plated Sealed. Heart buttons.
Finish: Brush applied water based satin polyurethane lacquer
Length: 760mm
Width: 205mm
Depth: 100mm
Scale length: 560mm / 22"

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