Post by cmkaco on Aug 4, 2006 10:24:05 GMT -5
The Travel Practice Bouzouki is an instrument I invented and built myself to fill the need of an easily transportable, silent bouzouki that I can take with me when I travel. I found that a lot of valuable bouzouki practice time was being lost while I sat in a hotel room and channel surfed on television. I didn’t want to bring an expensive and bulky regular bouzouki with me, because it would be too difficult, cumbersome, and loud. So, I developed this concept of The Travel Practice Bouzouki. It is all electric, silent (except for the vibration of the strings), comes apart into four compact pieces, and best of all, you can plug your iPod (or any music source for that matter) into the headphone amplifier, and listen to music while you play along with the music. You can hear the instrument through your headphones, and there is a volume and tone control. The whole thing fits into a case about 35 inches long by six inches wide by six inched high.
The neck and center body unit are all one piece of maple. There is a truss rod that adjusts from the end of the neck. The wings and back rib are also maple and connect to the body with stainless steel posts that go into brass connectors and are held in place with hex head retention screws. The wings were routed out to reduce weight. The dolphin inlays are all abalone and mother of pearl, and the pickguard is black plastic. To reduce the size, I made it headless, so the loops of the strings attach to the top of the neck. I modified a Weber cast bronze mandolin tailpiece to hold the string loops at the top of the neck. This is one part of the instrument that I am really proud of, because it took a lot of work, and looks great with the inlay. I used Sperzel locking tuners, which are located behind the face of the instrument. The strings go through the face around the polished brass rollers (very smooth action), and the string end goes into a hole in the tuner post and locks with a knurled nut so you don’t have to have a lot of windings on the tuner post.
For the nut and saddle I used mother of pearl, which is used on the best banjos. It is harder than bone, and on acoustic instruments gives a slightly brighter sound. The ebony bridge is a bouzouki first. It is adjustable for height by turning the screws under the saddle. You can raise or lower the bridge to get any action you want or to adjust when you need to use the truss rod to straighten the neck. The fingerboard is ebony.
The pickup is an EMG-FT. According to the technician at EMG, the FT is internally the same as the EMG-B, but the case is designed to be mounted on an electric guitar face. The headphone amplifier is also an EMG product. The pickup has tone and volume control and is run on a 9 volt battery, which is in a battery box on the back of the instrument. The power to the pickup is turned on when you plug in an amplifier, and since I will not be doing that, I just got an amplifier jack, inlaid the end with abalone and use that as the power switch.
Water based lacquer is the finish. There are twelve coats. Prior to finishing, I sanded the instrument down to 800 grit (rough is 60 grit, medium is about 150 and fine is 200). I sanded between the coats to keep a smooth, even finish. After letting the finish cure for two weeks, I sanded with increasingly finer micro mesh up to 12,000 grit, and then buffed it with buffing compound. The finish is pretty smooth! The frets were also polished with special fret polishing wheels and then with the 12,000 micro mesh. It really took a long time to get the frets just right -- low, well shaped and with good intonation. The action is very low with no buzzing.
The case is rigid foam, which is built up in layers so I could get a truly custom fit for all the pieces. The inside is covered in velvet, and the outside is ballistic nylon. There is a place for a metronome/tuner and picks and the amplifier jack, and another place for a cable and the wrenches for the retention screws and truss rod and a small wire cutter. The entire package, instrument, case, tuner/metronome, cables, hex wrenches, wire cutter and plugs weighs 8.5 pounds. I really don’t know how much time it took to make this. If I had to estimate, it would be well over 100 hours and maybe 150. Making an instrument that comes apart really ads to the complexity, because you have to match up the inlays on the pieces and get everything to look right. In addition, you have to be careful in the design process of where components will be placed and where inlays will go so you don’t cut something off at a joint where it will look really bad. It was a lot of fun to make, and I am enjoying playing it. My wife appreciates the fact that it is silent, and I think now that I have something to take with me when I travel, I will see some improvement in my playing. It always seemed that I would make progress at home, then go away for a week and come back and would have to start over. Now, I can take The Travel Practice Bouzouki with me and continue right where I left off.
Here is a link to my Freewebs.com photo album where you can see pictures of The Travel Practice Bouzouki:
www.freewebs.com/cmkaco/tbppictures.htm
The neck and center body unit are all one piece of maple. There is a truss rod that adjusts from the end of the neck. The wings and back rib are also maple and connect to the body with stainless steel posts that go into brass connectors and are held in place with hex head retention screws. The wings were routed out to reduce weight. The dolphin inlays are all abalone and mother of pearl, and the pickguard is black plastic. To reduce the size, I made it headless, so the loops of the strings attach to the top of the neck. I modified a Weber cast bronze mandolin tailpiece to hold the string loops at the top of the neck. This is one part of the instrument that I am really proud of, because it took a lot of work, and looks great with the inlay. I used Sperzel locking tuners, which are located behind the face of the instrument. The strings go through the face around the polished brass rollers (very smooth action), and the string end goes into a hole in the tuner post and locks with a knurled nut so you don’t have to have a lot of windings on the tuner post.
For the nut and saddle I used mother of pearl, which is used on the best banjos. It is harder than bone, and on acoustic instruments gives a slightly brighter sound. The ebony bridge is a bouzouki first. It is adjustable for height by turning the screws under the saddle. You can raise or lower the bridge to get any action you want or to adjust when you need to use the truss rod to straighten the neck. The fingerboard is ebony.
The pickup is an EMG-FT. According to the technician at EMG, the FT is internally the same as the EMG-B, but the case is designed to be mounted on an electric guitar face. The headphone amplifier is also an EMG product. The pickup has tone and volume control and is run on a 9 volt battery, which is in a battery box on the back of the instrument. The power to the pickup is turned on when you plug in an amplifier, and since I will not be doing that, I just got an amplifier jack, inlaid the end with abalone and use that as the power switch.
Water based lacquer is the finish. There are twelve coats. Prior to finishing, I sanded the instrument down to 800 grit (rough is 60 grit, medium is about 150 and fine is 200). I sanded between the coats to keep a smooth, even finish. After letting the finish cure for two weeks, I sanded with increasingly finer micro mesh up to 12,000 grit, and then buffed it with buffing compound. The finish is pretty smooth! The frets were also polished with special fret polishing wheels and then with the 12,000 micro mesh. It really took a long time to get the frets just right -- low, well shaped and with good intonation. The action is very low with no buzzing.
The case is rigid foam, which is built up in layers so I could get a truly custom fit for all the pieces. The inside is covered in velvet, and the outside is ballistic nylon. There is a place for a metronome/tuner and picks and the amplifier jack, and another place for a cable and the wrenches for the retention screws and truss rod and a small wire cutter. The entire package, instrument, case, tuner/metronome, cables, hex wrenches, wire cutter and plugs weighs 8.5 pounds. I really don’t know how much time it took to make this. If I had to estimate, it would be well over 100 hours and maybe 150. Making an instrument that comes apart really ads to the complexity, because you have to match up the inlays on the pieces and get everything to look right. In addition, you have to be careful in the design process of where components will be placed and where inlays will go so you don’t cut something off at a joint where it will look really bad. It was a lot of fun to make, and I am enjoying playing it. My wife appreciates the fact that it is silent, and I think now that I have something to take with me when I travel, I will see some improvement in my playing. It always seemed that I would make progress at home, then go away for a week and come back and would have to start over. Now, I can take The Travel Practice Bouzouki with me and continue right where I left off.
Here is a link to my Freewebs.com photo album where you can see pictures of The Travel Practice Bouzouki:
www.freewebs.com/cmkaco/tbppictures.htm