The resonator Guitars are constructed from guitars
I have come across or that friends have given me that were broken. I generally
remove the back and strengthen the tops and neck joins so they can take more
strain for using heavy steel strings and because they usually fell apart for
good reason. (They were made poorly.)
I cut a hole in the top to take a speaker (usually recycled from the dump or otherwise burned out or shorted ones I get from repair shops etc.) which I coat with shellack and it becomes the resonator cone. I make the bridges from strips of carbon fibre and the spiders from bamboo barbecue skewers or balsa wood. I have been decoupaging them and finishing them with at least six coats of nitro-cellulose laquer One day I will get hold of "liquid glass"which will be better aparently. The finished product always sounds unique and somewhere between a Banjo, a harp and a guitar They sound a bit mellower than the standard aluminum cone and have more sustain. People often comment that they sound amplified , I guess because they have the characteristic sound of a speaker and also because they are quite loud and have a ringing overtone content that sounds a bit like a reverb. Click on the following links to see pictures and (hopefully soon some sound samples) of the various ones I have constructed so far.
The classical twin speaker model
The Cannabis resonators .....>>>
here are some pix of some butchered speakers and a guitar made by Robert in Berlin after checking out these pages. Thanks for sending the photos and getting in touch, I get a buzz thinking someone is out there seeing this and getting inspired to do a bit of creative recycling.
