Homemade Resonator

This immediately strikes me as being a lot harder than it sounds..

Measure the scale length first. Also the thickness of the top and the height of the saddle and bridge. Bear in mind if you will be wanting to raise the action for better slide tone you will have to compensate somewhere in your build.

Then you gotta get the top off the acoustic, which would mean lots of delicate glue melting.. I should imagine you'd have to get it off in sections if you wanted to keep the ribbing mostly intact inside.

Then you have to consider the size and shape of your acoustic and either find an existing resonator top that's oversized so you can flush it with the edges or make your own. I mean, you could just get a sheet of brass or something, cut it down and stick a saddle on it. But sheet metal is surprisingly expensive these days! Plus you've gotta be prepared to sweat to work with it!

After that you need to glue the top on.. Sand off all the old glue and rough the surfaces up with 120 grit to get a good gluey surface, might be worth scratching up the underside of the metal too. I'm not really sure which glue would be best to bond metal and wood, but pressure is the most important aspect here. You are gonna want as many G-clamps as u can lay your hands on. This is to make the glue bond stronger as fully strung in concert pitch the strings will exert well over 150 square pounds of pressure on the guitar!

Then glue on your saddle with the same pressure method (using the measurements you saved from the start!) and see if you got it right. If you didn't you may be able to fix it with some crafty manipulation of the bridge, but if you are really out you'll just have to take it off and try again. The distance from the nut to the 12th fret should be EXACTLY the same as the distance from the 12th fret to the bridge (known as scale length).

After all that... it still might sound a bit 'homemade' and you'll have probably spent a fair bit on tools and materials.

If you want the experience then do it! It's great fun fiddling with guitars!

If you are on a budget and want to guarantee a usable instrument at the end of it then I'd suggest you spend your money on a 2nd hand resonator or a cheap new one.

Something like this: http://www.guitarandampshop.co.uk/acata … itars.html

Hope that helps!

No probs.

I'll be attempting a similar project at some point, it's gonna take me ages since i'll be starting pretty much from scratch.

It'll be like a resonator telecaster.. at least thats the plan! I'm gonna upload pics and a step by step progress report on here hopefully! Maybe with some video if I can be bothered!