Friday 30 August 2013

Recent Work: Tin Guitar. Romantic cigar box guitar and a junk cigar box Ukulele.

It's been a bit hectic at Shonky Towers lately unfortunately not making guitars, however I have made a few over the past couple of months that I realised I hadn't shown here.
This one was completed quite a while ago now and was a commission order for the same customer who commissioned the Shortscale 6 String CBG and case. It's a 3 string fretted guitar with an vintage Sportsman's relish tin.

The neck is fairly unique with copper strip fret position markers and an unusual enclosed headstock.
It's a wee bit fiddly to string up.
Sound wise like the Gingerbread man Tin guitar  it was pretty impressive with a real nice resonator sound.
Sound hole is on the top  side so the fantastic artwork isn't compromised and the Tin is braced and re-enforced with Cedar. The neck is attached to the body via 2 pine dowels that run through to a block at the back where the tailpiece is attached. Two Piezo's take care of the amplified sound and deliver a fairly true representation of the acoustic sound.








 
 

Next up is this 2 string slide.  Commissioned as a belated wedding gift from the empty box of celebratory cigars smoked at the wedding. To be fair it wasn't a box that I would have used and the recipients apparently are non musical so making it playable was not important. However it is playable. The dulcimer frets where added as an after thought at least if it is strummed it will make a reasonably nice noise.
As it was a gift to celebrate romance it has 2 strings in harmony with each other ! Gold machine heads with heart shaped buttons. Carved heart shaped fret position markers and a heart shaped sound hole and the name of the couple embossed in the lower part of the fret board. The neck is oak from an 60's dressing table. it would have originally held the mirror. For some reason It's one of my favourite builds so far.






 
Thirdly is a reasonably quick junk ukulele. I had been meaning to make it for a while and when a chap emailed me asking to make him a cheap one It spurred me on .
Marcella box. Neck is from a broken tool handle made from Beech with a mahogany headstock. fret board is from a cheap broken Ukulele. It actually turned out reasonably well. Yeah very quiet but I put a couple of piezo discs so it can be amplified.



There has also been another 6 string wich I will post about In a couple of days.
 
Cheers