Homemade Steel Body Guitar

[YeahDoIt]

Homemade steel body guitar. Piece of lumber for a neck, mount tuners, cut holes in metal cookie box, neck goes into box, two screws hold box cover to neck. Three strings. No frets, playing slide blues. Probably cost less than USA $ 20 to make. Looks very crude. Listen to the sound though. Reminds me of those National Steel Resonator guitars that cost thousands of dollars.

Welcome To Bluesville.mp3 http://www.box.net/shared/irplholvhq

[pictoratus]

That sounds cool!

What 3 strings do you have on it? And what tuning?

[dannyvawn]

Lets see pix.

[YeahDoIt]

Bottom 3 guitar strings. It's drop D tuning. D A d

I'm working on getting pictures. I don't have a camera so I have to ask people.

[YeahDoIt]

I found this picture on the web, it looks much like the guitar that I built. My guitar has the top of the metal box as the top and the bridge is a steel rod that I found, might be a hinge pin. I did not punch holes in my cookie box.

http://rusticguitars.com/wp-content/...ric_foto_3.jpg

[dannyvawn]

So it's not electric? Thats what was confusing me. Does it produce a good volume?

[YeahDoIt]

I put my computer microphone inside of the metal box to make the recording. The microphone worked so well I mounted a jack in the side, taped a cheap microphone to the inside and connected it up electrically. So now I can plug into an amplifier. But acoustically it's almost as loud as my acoustic guitar. I play it outside in the park and people seem to hear it from 50 or 100 feet away, maybe further. People seem to like it, most appear curious.

I recorded something similar with overdrive distortion to hear the sound but my friend says "it sounds like I'm two blocks away from a teenage kid playing distorted guitar in a garage with the garage door closed." I don't know if that's good or bad. I like the raw, primitive overdriven sound. I'm working on some songs, plan to try it out on some open mic audience, see what happens.