Yeah, haha. I know… I didn’t even know they existed til two days ago. ha. My Dad built me 4 cigar box guitars, but I din’t want to sell them. The boxes are over 100 years old, I reckon.
I don’t think I’ll ever get sentimentally attached to a B and Q shovel.
Im doing this 90% for myself, but sometimes people walk up to me in the street and offer to buy instruments off me outright.
China is already producing tons of budget guitars. Pretty hard to compete with them, cos they win with large scale factories.
Im paying for the build time and parts, so there’s zero risk for you. I figure I may be able to sell one for 5,000TWD or more. Got to learn to play some good blues on it first. The guy in the video is pretty skilled. Would take 5-10 hours to come close towhat he’s doing. But it’s all fun.
Unconventional is how you win in a market. 16 million views proves to me this is not a niche video. Though a lot of that is down to his awesome playing.
As the whole thing is low-priced, social and fun… I figure I have nothing to lose. It really comes down to playing one in the street, and having an extra one spare lying there on the bench.
Yea, China makes shit guitar shaped toys… you could buy it brand new for 2000nt with case. But these thing falls apart within a couple of months, and they start to sound like shit after a while too. There are higher quality guitars but again, if you are spending 40,000 or more on a guitar you really want it to last more than a few years, and those chinese guitars are built for scale, not repairability or anything. That means when it comes neck reset time (which can happen in as little as 5 years) the guitar becomes useless because it isn’t worth the cost to have the neck reset. And since they’re built for scale, the neck is basically potted in epoxy and so is impossible to remove without sawing it off.
But as for unconventional guitars, I saw there’s a guitar made out of some guy’s ribcage…
If we get this thing built, one vid will be playing it live in Huilong MRT.
The shovel solves a ton of Luthier problems. I’ve been wanting to sell cigar box guitars since 2012. I stopped because cigar boxes are hard to find, and CBGuitars don’t do well in humidity.
@Taiwan_Luthiers did an excellent job on the shovel guitar. It sounds deep, haunting and original. He deserves a medal of honour, for putting himself in the line of fire, and drilling through a really heavy iron plate. His workshop was full of fumes for about an hour after. Next time we better drill outside.
There is another Forumosan who witnessed this, but he’ll remain anonymous for now.
The electronics are visible, simple and well soldered. The neck wood is heavy, and contributes to the tone.
It’s a drag to drill through heavy iron (or whatever it is), but the sound is much better with a thicker plate.
Have some pics which I’ll upload later.
I have a few ideass for MKII, but this one is sounding fine for now.
The wiring’s on the front, right near the middle of the shovel. Im sure TL has some ideas for casing, later. We did it in 3 hours of workshop time, so any lack of casing is my fault.
I like having the electronics totally visible on the outside. It demystifies the inner workings, and lets people see how simple an electric guitar is. If we ever do house them, glass would be really cool.
There are no solder tags, that I know of, but you can ask TL.
One of the most exciting things about this, is that it cuts luthier time by 90%, but still makes an original, beautiful sounding guitar.
I realized homemade guitars are all about the resonant body. Looking forward to getting something really heavy next time.
Will hopefully have some MP3s up at some point. Trying to get a sound halfway between Left Lane Cruiser, Derek Trucks, Mongolia and Pink Floyd.
