Hello, I've been modifying an inexpensive biscuit bridge wood body resonator with a mini humbucker neck pickup, volume pot and jack. I had to learn to solder, and cutting the pickup hole was a first. The pickup sounds great, but I noticed the 12th fret action increased significantly, around .030" higher from where I'd previously set it. Before doing the pickup surgery, I thought it might need reinforcement but hoped the 4.3mm laminated top would hold up. I dropped the action down, and kept an eye on it. Unfortunately, it was creeping up again, though not nearly as much. After convincing myself that it couldn't just be from the big shift to summer high humidity levels (not even sure that would raise the action like on a flat top acoustic, if anyone knows), I started to think about how I could reinforce the area to prevent more sinking. This particular resonator has no bracing except for a block under the fretboard extension. The resonator tone ring has four dowel pedestals supporting it, but thats all! It should have been obvious that adding a big hole between the f holes that were already there was going to cause some dipping. My plan is to glue a cross brace (3/8"H,1/4"W) between the pickup cutout and resonator ring and two diagonal braces (1/4"H,1/4"W) running from the corners of the fretboard extension block to the cross brace. I'd like to not notch the cross brace into the lining. I'm not even sure I could, with the resonator ring coming down pretty far, not leaving much room to get in there with a chisel. Here's a rough drawing of what I had in mind and a few more pics of the resonator.
I just wanted to get some feedback on if this sounds like it would sufficiently reinforce the cutout. My other idea is run a cross brace across the back of the upper bout and wedge a dowel between it and the fretboard block. One thing that should help is this resonator is going to be played with light tension strings, no super heavy guage slide strings. I appreciate any advice. Thanks!
- Fretboard block
- How I was going to notch onto fretboard block
- .O21" dip w/ string tension, .012" without
