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.