CURSED OBJECTS

Not every build requires a big write up, this one does but I am tired of trying to remember every detail of every build so far! So yeah.

Honestly though the American Cherry that I used for he neck on this guitar was a pleasure to work with, play with and look at once it was all finished. 

I just read a guitar companies latest selling point about “Hypoallergenic Frets” and I want to slam my foot in a door. 

Seriously?

Ughhh! 

Things were starting to get somewhat more refined by the time it came to making “The Worm” (you’ll understand once you see the pictures). I’d been making a few guitars in the background and had been furiously pouring over articles, books and videos relating to the art of Luthery as well as the tradition of Cigar Box Guitars. I’d started selling a few online and in a local cigar shop the Paladar Fumior Salon in South Brisbane, if you ever happen to be in the area stop by and have a chat with Filip over a fantastic coffee. My builds were beginning to more closely resemble fully functional instruments more than functional art and it just so happened that a fellow musician interested in more off kilter type guitars had seen one of my adverts online. 

Raf, had called me up asking to come and visit and check out my current stock, not that I had very much on hand but I said sure come on over. I was thinking I was going to make a sale and swiftly make my way to the timber yard to collect some new raw stock to start building some new guitars. As it happens he turned up with more than the want for something I already had, he asked me if I could make a Guitar out of something that wasn’t a cigar box? Not wanting to disappoint I swiftly blurted out that I could make one out of most things. Now, up until this point I had made nothing other than CBG’s and I knew I couldn’t make a guitar out of anything… 

We spoke for a little and he picked up a few of my guitars and then he reached into his bag and asked, could you make a guitar out of, this? 

Raf had himself an effects pedal called The Worm made by Electro Harmonix and he had kept the wooden box it came in. From that moment I knew that Raf and I were going to get along pretty well. 

The box itself was huge, by comparison I had ben working on things around half its size in diameter and depth, this was like a cargo container to me. 

There were a few differences between The Worm box and a cigar box, for one the lid slide out from top to bottom instead of a latch style box for cigars so that would be something to consider, also there was a rather high lip around the walls of the box that recessed the lid so the fretboard would have to be of a hight to compensate for that. Raf also wanted a P-90 pickup in there and for it to be a 4 string model. The 4 string I could do, the P-90, I couldn’t. 

Looking back on it, you know, I probably could have done the P-90 but I just wasn’t ready for that yet and I like to be honest about these things. The plywood used for the lid is really thin on these things, plus it’s not really flat and when you take it out of the box, it’s really not flat! I was worried about it warping, about the timber breaking, about basically fucking up every part of it imaginable that I had to say that I couldn’t do it. What I did do however was create a cover plate on the back of the body so that future mods could be made. 

So The Worm was decided on and I got to work. 

The neck was an interesting timber, Budgeroo if I remember correctly, very very hard and very unforgiving if you goof up with a spoke shave which is what I had turned to to shape my necks at this stage. 

The length of timber had started out at about 45mm and I wanted it shaved back to about 37mm, without a thicknesser, doing this by hand is a task!

So with the neck finally shaped I went about the task of putting it together. As I said the lids of these boxes are rather thin, the sides are not, they are thick laminated pine and take some working through. 

Once the neck pocket was cut I marked out the fret positions and cut them. At this stage I was still finishing parts of the neck before fretting. I’ve stopped doing things in that order these days but, I do prefer the finish you can get on a fretboard while doing it in this order. very smooth. 

Frets on, moving on.

Sorry, I don have many photo’s of the process after this apart form the finished product. Machine heads on, electronics in, controls sorted bone nut and bone bridge in place and shaped, it was time to assemble The Worm

Okay, the bridge wasn’t completely finished here…

Still making stumpy headstocks at this stage.

…just like a strat…

And you know what? It sounded pretty damn good. I’ll post up a video to it. Electro Harmonix even put it up on their FB page, I was blown away by the response to this thing! After this, things started to get busy. 

Copper top was as much an experiment in aesthetics as it was an experiment with pushing what I was previously capable of doing. Up until this point I had been focusing on 3 string Slide Guitars, and while that was in line with the traditional concept of Cigar Box Guitars, I was wanting to branch out. It was a little bit of running before I could walk, but in all honestly that is a character trait that I wrestle with still to this day. 

So “Copper Top” started life looking like this. 

I was not very taken with the look of the label, nevermind the health warning sticker, there was and still is something about the graphics of these boxes that doesn’t sit right with me, the whole faux marble look. So instead of just sanding it off and perhaps gluing a new label on or something along those lines I bought a sheet of copper and went about gluing that on to the surface. What I love about copper is the way it ages and, if I didn’t have to pay the bills, I would have kept this one for myself to see what happens to it over time. 

The build was also my first fretted model, I think it ran at 16 frets(?) on a 25.5 inch scale. The neck was Tasmanian Oak, not an overly rare nor attractive timber, but as it was still early days for me, finding supplies of exotic timber was not at the forefront of my mind. 

In the end, it came out looking like this -

I decided to scuff the copper with some 800 grit sandpaper at one stage to advance the possibility of a patina occurring…

If you missed the video search the Archive with - Copper Top

I’m in the middle of doing a couple builds right now and they are all at stages that don’t particularly warrant taking photo’s and telling stories about. I’m also about to take a couple of days off to head to Byron Bay and get massively sunburnt because Celtic skin is apparently allergic to the sun.  In the meantime I’m going to try and line up some posts for the Archive collection, and today we start with builds number 2 & 3. After this I won’t really number them, I promise, it all becomes a blur to me anyway. 

#2

As you can probably see if you are playing along at home, it’s really not much different from my first build apart from the longer neck. It’s hard to see any input jacks or anything on this one but it is ‘electric’ I just so happened to drill the hole for the jack in a completely baffling location so that when playing holding like a normal guitar, to plug it in the guitar lead would jut out from the top of the body facing your chin. Genius I know… Hey I drilled the hole without thinking and thought what better way to learn from your mistakes than to let it be! 

After this build I wanted to up the ante a little so I decided to do a little bit of planing, my 3rd build would be my first that actually had anything resembling a standard scale length and a slightly more refined string through and bridge system. 

#3

Obviously I still had a fair bi to learn if you want to really pick at things, but I don’t so… The hardest part of this build was drilling the string through straight enough with a hand drill blindly through the body as I didn’t really plan things all that well and glued the top down with the neck set in before thinking just how in the hell I would get the strings through.

Also notice the inclusion of a volume control, LOOKOUT FENDER! 

I was going through my “Cubist” phase apparently channeling Picaso with this headstock right here.

I did start shaping a neck profile with this build and ever since it has been one of my favourite parts of putting the guitars together. A little unrefined yes I know, but I think I did this with sandpaper alone. (I wish I was kidding)

A little while after this went to a new home I decided to put frets on it, I don’t have any photo’s of that but if you can imagine little bits of wire placed into wood, you get the idea ;) 

From this build onwards, things started getting a little bit refined and each subsequent build started looking somewhat closer to the guitars I am making these days. More Archive Builds coming soon. 

I started this blog long after I started making Cigar Box Guitars and wanted to slowly put some of the older builds up here to keep them in some form of online archive. So keep an eye out for the “Archive” title, they will be builds of days gone by, all moved on to loving homes. I was going to just get them all out in one hit but I thought that might give a few people good reason to hit the old unfollow button… 

So without further ado, ladies and gentleman I give you, #1.

I can honestly say that making my first CBG was a life changing experience. This was a rough build (no frets, no scale) and I really had no idea what I was doing at the time but I was proud as punch to have made something “playable”. Sold in a Cigar Shop, long long ago, dodgy strings and all. 

Sorry about the poor picture quality…

So I’ve been a little bit hard up for time to follow through with some write ups I was hoping to get to, there is a pile of work that is oddly enough piling up so please don’t hold me to anything I may have said in the past few days, or am likely to say in the next few. 

Right, that’s out of the way. One thing I have been able to get finished and thought I ought to give you a look at is one of the newest Cigar Box Guitars by Black Cat Bone Guitars.

This build heralded a few firsts for me, it was the first time I’d gone and made a neck with a fretboard not out of the original piece of timber, the scale of the guitar is also shorter than what I would normally use - truth be told I completely ballsed-up the length of timber when I cut it and found a work around, so it’s a short Mustang Scale at 22.5. It’s also got fully individually adjustable saddles acting as the bridge cut from Ebony with frets installed for AQKURACEY (a design heavily borrowed upon from another local builder Ravensbox Guitars), and to make life a little easier in getting the control pots in place (just volume and input jack on this one) I cut out a little control plate from some chrome lying around. 

The box was a nice El Rey del Mundo, or King of the world, apparently though I don’t see Leonardo DiCaprio ANYWHERE! As you can see from here the string through is located at the tail of the neck which runs through the body. 

19 Frets on the neck with Abalone inlay markers at 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 12th - after that you are on your own. Some might say you have no business playing that high on a cigar box guitar, and they would be right, get the hell down from there Malmsteen. 

The neck is a combination of Tasmanian Snakewood and mystery wood. Yep I have actually got zero idea what in the hell I used, but it smelt like destiny Cedar. Seriously though, that snakewood feels amazing on the hand, it’s a treat to carve and I’m buying a lot of it to use. SO YOU BETTER LIKE IT.

Spent some time getting the bone nut to the hight I wanted and then cut the slots in pretty quickly, it’s left the guitar with a nice and playable action for slide and fretting. 

Neck/Headstock contour. You would be amazed at how much f a difference it makes when this is placed in the wrong position. This one isn’t.

For me I want the contour to start just before the nut, with the most dramatic shaping after the nut. 

The same goes for the heel at the body end of the neck, start cutting that in too high up the neck and you will be having issues keeping a stable grip on the guitar. 

The Ebony saddles are fully independent of each other and can slide up and down to correct any intonation issues that you just can’t duplicate with a single bar bridge (in my experience). Underneath them a Piezo transducer is located going straight to the volume and output, no tone dials on this one. Why? It’s a PIEZO…

SOLD.

Now, there may be a good chance I’m starting to develop a bit of a problem when it comes to looking for “fixer uppers”. The problem isn’t so much in the looking, but the buying that swiftly follows.

Things are legit starting to look like an episode of hoarders in my workshop space. 

Today I bought myself this -

My very first DAION

Now you might be thinking well, that just looks like a pretty stock standard Stratocaster replica and you would be right, and also wrong. The first thing I noticed apart from the fact that I should probably not buy it, is that the body is slightly different from a Strat, it seems a little smaller and the ‘horns’ seem a little longer? Maybe I’m trippin’ balls, hey I have been up since 3am making pastry for the Queen. Not really for the Queen, but maybe she might like some…

Honestly I think I bought it based on how yellowed the scratchplate and controls are. 

So not only did the body look a little off kilter but it had my most hated bridge in the history of all bridges, even worse than the one over the River Kwai, a Floyd Rose Tremelo. Why do I hate them? I just do. 

Everything on this headstock is thankfully busted to all hell so I have no need to even pretend like I’m going to fix that string locking system up. I do however really like the headstock shape. 

The neck actually feels really great in my opinion, it has aged nicely, the frets are hardly worn (though they might be in the wrong place), and it’s just got a nice vintage feel about it, as good I would say as the “Classic Vibe” series that Squire have been producing for a few years, which I think are well beyond value for money. 

The moment that brought me the most joy was looking at this tremolo block and seeing how far gone it was! It literally crumbled when I pulled it out. I was never going to use it but it was something I’d not seen before, I was surprised at how poor a condition it was in, when the rest of the guitar seemed not too bad.

So that was todays Pawn Shop purchase a DAION dating from sometime in the late 80’s I’m guessing, made in Korea with leftover parts from the Japanese factory that was making them previously. There are no identifying marks on the guitar anywhere, not even a model name under the logo, annnnnnnd it’s made of plywood so it is pretty much a sure thing it’s one of the Korean makes, and I’m pretty alright with that.  

What to do with it? Well I really do like it for some strange reason, so i will be keeping you updated when things start to happen, I think it needs some kooky electronics in there, maybe a fernandez sustainer? Who knows!!! 

Black Cat Bone Guitars was founded with Cigar Box Guitars being our main product, and while the company is starting to branch out into new styles of builds, we will always at heart be a cigar box guitar company. Have a squiz at our latest build! 

This is a 4 string build that was custom ordered, the brief was nice and simple - 4 strings model with a Bass pickup with only a volume pot, have a bit of character and sound sweet plugged or acoustic. Not a “bells and whistles” type build. I found a really beaten up old box and beat it up some more, the nice thing about these smaller boxes is they have really thin walls, so the acoustics bounce out of them without too much need to put sound holes in. By the time I was finished with it, it had a few accidental sound holes anyways. It’s a fine line between charring timber and just burning it to ashes.

Queensland Maple neck, one of my most favoured timbers to use, strong and almost always has a beautiful look to it.  

Being well guarded, by the garden Raptor. The bone nut is also useful in keeping the tone a little more mellow due to the lack of tone controls, not much, but a little! 

Just look at that mint taking over… 

Proudly made by Black Cat Bone Guitars in Brisbane, Australia. 

Hey so I’m working on a new full bodied guitar build and I got to thinking, what better way to bring us all closer together than to share with you the dizzying highs and terrible lows of the process. 

Now from the outset I gotta warn you, this could be a lengthy process and updates may be a little sparse at times. I’m building this one with as few power tools as possible and will be taking each pass with a plane or strike with a chisel as cautiously as possible. 

In this post I was just wanting to share with you the process I used to get the outline template designed and cut. It’s a small step, but even just getting the shape cut out was a bit of a rush. 

In the first photo below you will see two rough guitar outlines, on the right is a tracing of a Les Paul shape guitar, I just whacked the body down and rough traced it. The reason for this is I like the size of a Les Paul, it’s comfortable for me and if I’m going to be really honest, as good as my hand is at rough drawing, scale is not my forte, so I wanted to trace an outline next to where I was going to rough out my body design. The design itself, which is in a really rough state on the left in that photo was somewhat loosely based on a combination of a Les Paul, a Telecaster, A Schecter Solo 6 and a little bit of the Maton Mastersound. On top of all that I wanted it to be a little bit of a throwback to 70’s Japanese models that were often a little more adventurous. So with my scale reference off to the side I started scribbling away and came up with a rough guide to cut.

It’s looking a little bit iffy here and you might be able to see I did a little playing around with the Les Paul outline as well, just to play with giving it an offset look. 

I think at this stage it was resembling at the most a Maton Mastersound with a Schecter Offset and I wasn’t completely set on the design yet. I gave myself a bit of room to move when I cut it out, a few centimetre’s outside the outline incase I wanted to do something dramatic to the design. Sure, not much work had gone into it yet but when you are cutting by hand, everything takes a bit more time. 

Very roughly cut out to give room for alterations. 

I was reasonably happy with the outline at this stage so went about cleaning it up and bringing the excess in to the outline(s). Yeah I got a bit all over the place with pencil marks which only ADDED to the fun. 

Something was just not sitting right with me, the shape was too “friendly” and a little goofy looking, the horns were too bulbous or something, I mean, it looked okay but it was just a bit, meh. You know what I mean? I just felt like I had seen it before and to me, what is the point of doing something that has been done to perfection a million times before? I wanted something original and organic, I like to work that way, it’s why I use hand tools as much as possible, I’m not saying you can’t get the same feeling from a power tool, but for me it feels like I am allowing the shape to show itself by making as much contact as possible with hand tools. 

Welp, things just got a bit spiritual there…

Here’s the revised shape after some tweaking.

Horns slightly sharpened up and the lower offset cinched in just enough to still be noticeable. 

I think it’s still wearing it’s influences on it’s sleeves to an extent but I feel like it’s much more of an original look and with the sharper horns and planned pickguard I think the 70’s Japanese guitar look will shine through. 

Once the body template was shaped I just felt like doing some playing around with hardware and neck idea’s. My first thought was to put a Tune o’ matic bridge on there and swiftly threw some parts form an Epiphone on there to have a look, I tried full stop tail and also tried using the stop tail as a rough idea as to how a wrap around bridge would look.

Personally I dug the wrap around bridge look but … Oh and pay no attention to the added bits and pieces, just on there for scale reference ideas. 

As much as I did like the idea of a wrap around, not only for looks but for tone and sustain I know I am not in a position to chisel out a neck pocket with a two degree angle, not do I want to angle a neck heel, or even put a shim in there because I hate being able to see them, or the space they leave if you don’t use a full pocket shim. \

So what do?! 

I decided the only responsible thing to do on an offset guitar like this would be to use a Fender Mustang bridge. as I’m not looking at doing a string through body here. So the only way I could be sure about that being what I wanted was to mock it up, sadly I didn’t have one lying around that I could use unless I wanted to pull someone else’s guitar apart that I’m meant to be doing a set up on. It was time to get some quick photoshopping on. In the picture you will notice a few things, one a strange colour - that won’t be the colour, two some TV Jones Pickups - I’m actually thinking them or some Lollar’s it’s a bit in the air still, three a CBS style stratocaster neck with jumbo headstock - that is actually the look I will be going for with this build, four all manner of strange pickgaurd ideas - who know’s what I’m doing but yeah, ummmmm, as an idea I actually don’t mind it. 

Now honestly, ain’t that some fancy photoshopping? Yikes.

And that is where this one is at, lot’s of work to do, but I’m looking forward to seeing where the build goes next. IF I BUILD A FLYING V BY ACCIDENT SOMETHING WENT SO SO SO WRONG. 

Later gang.

So while I’ve been waiting for the telecaster build to dry out, I decided it would be an excellent opportunity to start some more customised guitar projects. First off the line is this Epiphone LP Special (needs).

I found this guitar lurking away on gumtree and the ad online made it look better than it was, but I’d driven out to pick it up so I thought what the hell? I could tell from the ad it had just come out of a storage shed of some description and the guy I bought it from had no idea how long it had been in there for, he just won it in an auction and really had no use for it, my reply to that was FIREWOOD, but who knows what this thing might release into the atmosphere when burning so I thought the most responsible thing to do would be to buy it, take it home and strip it down and customise it a little. 

Sooooooo anyways, it started off life as some sort of white colour, I think, it was hard to tell because sweet baby jesus was it dirty. Under the grime it showed that it had apparently been in a hail storm, with some pretty heavy dings all over. I didn’t even want to play it, I mean I’ve had a tetanus shot recently but the strings looked a little like rusty barbed wire. Forgoing my better judgement I plugged it in, strummed a few chords, got a bit “Hendrix” on it and thought to myself, you know what? I’ve never heard a guitar in my life sound so, unbelievably shitting awful. Firewood was again becoming an option. 

Unplug, step back and think about what you have done…

(BTW - check out that tiny control space, totally saving the tone of that plywood right there)

In my opinion fire fixes everything, fire and sometimes sandpaper. I pulled everything out of the guitar, noting the fine (ahem) “craftsmanship” of the lovely folks at whatever factory was churning out these models at the time. The lack of any shielding I thought, was a true touch of genius, almost as well thought out as the plastic input jack cover… 

After striping it down I still wasn’t really sure what to do with the thing, I mean it’s plywood and it’s not the best feeling guitar in my opinion. I figured a good place to start would be to at least sand it back and fill the cavities on the body, with that job done rather easily it was just a case of waiting for the weather to clear up so I could start a new paint job. By this stage I had decided if nothing else I was going to gussy this old girl up so it was at least something interesting to look at, I’m also shaving the neck down to a slimmer profile and repainting/finishing that. The pickups are being heavily labelled “DO NOT TOUCH EVEN IN CASE OF EMERGENCY” and thrown in the bottom of my collection of junk, I don’t maybe they will come in handy for something. I’m thinking of putting in some decent Wilkinson pickups with chrome covers, new pots and an orange drop capacitor as they don’t cost an arm and a leg and I think they will service this guitar nicely. Like I said, I don’t foresee this guitar ever being a tone monster, but you never know, right? 

I’ll be switching out the Volume and Tone controls to something chrome, as well as a new T.O.M bridge, probably also Wilkinson but perhaps with brass saddles, the original was a horrible die cast piece that just can’t stay. I’m going to cut a pickgaurd out for this in the traditional Les Paul style probably out of something like coated aluminium. 

Moving up the guitar, the neck will be shaved and repainted, new tuners, possible Grovers will be put on as the ones that came on the guitar spun and spun and spun and basically I took them off the guitar and they are still spinning around. And yes, so far that is the plan. 

Oh and eventually after the weather did clear up I got onto a few coats of the new paint job. Copper, because why not? 

More updates soon.