Building Box Instruments

I built this guitar using a jewelry box made with unidentified hardwood, an oak neck, a maple fretboard and brass frets. I also installed a piezo and volume knob to use it as an electric guitar. The sound holes are ornamented with brass grommets and the bridge is also made of brass. I had the strings go straight through the bridge instead of being bent at a ninety-degree angle where they were held to the bridge. The piezo is sealed with silicone sealant and a second layer of rubber. The third, fifth, seventh, ninth, twelfth, fifteenth and seventeenth fret are marked with burns to show which fret you are playing. To fix the fret buzzing, I loosened the strings and pushed them out of the way so I could file the frets down. One difficulty that I have run into is that this is the guitar that I'm learning on, and it's not particularly easy to play. I have gotten to the point where I can play some songs pretty well but learning on this guitar has been a challenge.

Using a scale length of twenty-four inches, I calculated the distance for each of the frets. The formula to calculate the distance for the frets is the scale length divided by 17.817. That gets you the location of the first fret, and you then subtract the distance of the first fret from the scale length and divide it again. Once this has been done for the sum of frets you are using, you have all the fret locations. The most critical things in this design were the scale length and the height of the neck above the surface of the box. The height of the bridge over the surface of the box is also important because it determines the height of the action on the guitar.