Brag Site!

Warning - the following is a self indulgent brag site. I've had a win and I'm putting it on the web.

Bob Brozman likes my guitar!

Friday 8th September 2006...

I've been listening to Bob Brozman for a long time. I attended a workshop with him in Brisbane two and a half years ago and he taught us how to count in 2 and 3 at the same time and he told us that it was a pity that there are not enough guitars to go around.

Bob inspired me and as I sat in the dark listening to his music, a design for a guitar formed in my mind, a guitar that I would be able to make for myself with cheap or free materials with normal handtools and normal manual skills and not take too long about it. I told Bob that night that I would email him the design when I got it working. He said "Great!" and promptly forgot about it. Just another keen fan, spaced out by the music, spouting well meaning fancy.

It was a tough two and a half years but last night at a gig in Brisbane, I showed him the guitar and he said it was good.

This is me with the guitar, getting ready to go to the gig.

This is Bob with the guitar at the gig.

This is me after the gig. I'm pretty happy at this point.

Now, a little about the guitar itself. It's called the Uncle Bob which is a tribute to Maestro Brozman and also a reference to the Australian vernacular for something easy to do. With this guitar, Bob's your Uncle.

The guitar is designed to be manufacturable by anyone anywhere. It requires;

• A Stick - Which can be one piece of wood or it can be several pieces of wood joined together, the design of the guitar allows for scrap timber to be laminated together and the strength is provided by the frets.
• A Resonator - On the first prototype, it is two waste vegetable oil cans; the bottoms are cut off and basically jammed together. Other options are plastic water drums or traditionally made musical drums.
• 5 meters of wire or heavy nylon "fishing line" - this is used as the frets and the tailpiece suspension.
• A set of guitar strings - alternatives are fishing line for nylong strings and bicycle brake cable for steel strings.
• 6 screws - these are used for the tuning tailpiece mechanism, which varies for steel or nylon strings. For nylon it's 6 wood screws for steel it's 6 metal tread screws with matching wing nuts.
• A Can - can be steel or aluminium. Used for shims.
• $100 worth of hand tools - including
  • a wood saw,
  • a metal saw,
  • a pair of sheet metal shears,
  • a hammer,
  • a chiesel,
  • a straight edge,
  • sand paper or files,
  • a hand drill,
  • two drill bits,
  • a center punch,
  • some glue.
• 10 hours - the first one will take longer but it would be a very casual workload to make 5 a week once you were practiced and had made all the patterns.
• The Instructions - the most important ingredient of all and includes a fret position indicator (tape measure).

Total cost to set up a guitar factory and make 100 guitars - $1000 and 10 weeks (two people working). I reserve the right to update this estimate when I've acutally made 100 of them, but I'm pretty confident.

I would like to get this design out to as many people as possible so that anyone who wants a guitar can have one. I've got a few ideas for doing that which I'll post soon and I'm keen to talk to anyone who wants to help.

Here are some close ups of the prototype...

The tuning tailpiece, this is the steel string version. I'll post the nylon version once I've got it working.

Detail of the frets and the zero fret.

The back of the neck. The texture of the nylon does not impede the playability of the instrument, it sort of gives you a feel for where you are on the neck.

The body join.

The whole guitar just by itself.

And finally, that message from Bob once again.

Saturday 9th September 2006....

Okay I know what you're thinking. "So what does it actually sound like?" Fair enough, this is what it sounds like when I play it but we'll have to wait to hear what it really sounds like.

My Morning Finger Picking exercise

The neck is too narrow and the strings are too close to the edge but the next one should work better.

Some gentle strumming

The tone needs to be stronger especially in the bass we'll see what we can do.

Barr Chords

Quite a satisfying rattle.

Well there you go. I'd like to conclude by acknowledging the loving support of;

my Muse Ralph;

and my shed mate Tim.

Thanks Guys.

Charles Neville.