Thursday, September 19, 2013

The 'Hurricane'

The 'Hurricane' is a three-string acoustic/electro guitar created from CAO Fabrica de Tabacos cigar box. 

The cherry wood neck has an eight degree scarf joint at the headstock, which lends to style, strength and string tension. 

The nut is hand formed from Corian stock.

The fretboard, complete with 22 hand shaped stainless frets, is rosewood.  Check out the beautiful grain in this wood.

Open back geared tuners stretch the strings over the 25.4-inch scale, from the hand formed Corian saddle recessed into the rosewood bridge.

The string retainer tailpiece is also designed from the same stick of rosewood, and it anchors the strings to the back of the body.

To accommodate the acoustic needs, I drilled 5/16" holes in the domed top to let sound escape, which is adequate for a nice mellow resonance.

The TotalRojo magnetic pickup is designed to allow only the posts to be exposed through the top, which I feel is less obstructive to the overall design.  And, it does not take away from the bright red hurricane design of the box. 

To complete the design, I decided to create a volume control knob from rosewood.  It looked good, but it didn't stand out like I wanted.  So, I rummaged around through some old coins left over from a European trip and came up with a French coin depicting Caesar.  When the ol' boy's head is turned, the volume increases, probably similar to his behavior all those years ago.

The top is slightly domed (visible in the photo at the left), which is very strong, but a little more difficult to work around.

It plays nice, sounds good, and I'm a happy camper.

Hope you enjoy it. 

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