Tremoloa

Here is another odd instrument that has past through Shonky towers.
It is caled a Tremoloa it is a type of zither or chordaphone.
It was originally made in the 1930's and went through several small design changes. I believe this one originates from the late 40's early 50's.
I bought it mainly out of curiosity and soon found it it was quite horrible to play so sold it on (at a considerable profit ;-) )
It is basically a box made from plywood with two soundholes. 16 strings arranged in groups of four each tuned to the chords in the key of C attached to the left side of the soundboard and a single melody string along the right side. The single string is played with a plectrum attached by a thin metal strip to a heavy metal roller which in turn is attached to the instrument by a swinging arm. When you pluck the string it wobbles the bar and gives a constant wobble to the note.
The best example I found is on This Site

Mahogany Shonkybox Cigar box guitar

Here is my latest instrument
Yes it is another cigar box guitar
I started to make this with the intention of making a typical CBG but it soon took a slightly different direction yes it is a 4 string fretless CBG but I think it has it's own unique style.

The box was just a plain mahogany box so I'm not sure it was even a cigar box.

The Neck is made from a scrap mahogany  bannister from the massive load of scrap mahogany pieces I mentioned in a previous blog. It's a really nice piece of wood with lovely straight and rich grain.

The fingerboard is Bubinga with thin line note indicators (fret markers where the frets would be if it had them)

The nut, floating bridge and string retainer are all made from purpleheart and there is a small piece of sheet metal on the string retainer to keep the strings from digging into the wood even though that purpleheart is rock hard. and takes some working.

Gold tuners compliment the rich dark mahogany perfectly.

It is loaded with two simple 27mm piezo discs one near the bridge and one more towards the neck.

The top is glued on and the only internal access is via the jack plate.

I originally thought about fitting 12 - 52 flat wounds as the intention is to be able to play this not only as a slide guitar but also as a fretless instrument the fingerboard is flat enough. However It just wasn't lively enough and I wasn't happy about the extra tension. (I have since tried them on my  Squier affinity strat and had to put an extra 2 springs on the trem as the tension just pulled it right up!)

So now it has the low 4 strings from an acoustic medium set on which sound much better but I might have to go for the 5th 4th 3rd and 2nd as the 6th sounds a bit dead. and it's pretty quiet acoustically. I might have to go for a lighter set altogether to get the best out of it.

Here's the pictures. it will be for sale shortly as I will be re-cycling an old wardrobe to make a hard case for it. early enquiries are of course welcome.