Tricone resonator guitar

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william hopper
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Feb 07, 2012 12:34 am

Tricone resonator guitar

Post by william hopper »

I have built a wood body biscuit bridge resonator. Does anyone have dimensions or a source for plans for a Tricone . Wood or metal body will work. Neck angle, well depth, etc. thanks william
Freeman Keller
Posts: 494
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2012 11:34 am

Re: Tricone resonator guitar

Post by Freeman Keller »

william hopper wrote:I have built a wood body biscuit bridge resonator. Does anyone have dimensions or a source for plans for a Tricone . Wood or metal body will work. Neck angle, well depth, etc. thanks william
I have an Autocadd drawing in both dwg and pdf format (if I can find them) of the top of a tricone. As I recall its 11-1/2 frets clear as many of the old ones were and 25.0 scale length. For neck angle you set the neck to your bridge and sound well depth is usually one inch but get all of your hardware before you start and confirm. When building a reso you kind of do it backwards from a normal acoustic - you start with the bridge height and location and work back to the nut and neck set.

A few years ago I built a woodie from these plans - here are some pictures at "the other lutherie forum"

http://luthiersforum.com/forum/viewtopi ... 04&t=29796

My guitar used a standard bolt on neck, not a neck stick and seems to be holding up fine. I also made the sound well a bit over sized (you can't do this with a single cone) - that let me move the cones slightly to get the intonation I wanted. Once I was happy I glued a little triangle in between the cones to position them (I think metal ones have a raised section here.

If you would like a copy of the plans I'll see if I can find them - I'll need an e-mail addy (PM it to me). A builder in France took these plans and made a square neck - I think I have a copy of that. Also somewhere in the MIMF archives is a very detailed construction thread of a metal tricone - no plans but lots of good information. I do have hard copy and could snail mail you a copy if you can't find the original.
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