Riverwood Pottery Guitar Slides

Ceramic Guitar Slides from Dillsboro

Anita Gayle and I recently spent a few days in Dillsboro, NC to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary and found a great pottery shop in our exploration of this beautiful little mountain village, Riverwood Pottery.

Brant and Karen Barnes, along with their daughter, Zan, produce amazing purpose-driven art like kitchen and tableware. The talented, inventive trio also produces decorative and functional vases, oil lamps, face jugs, and much more.

Of particular interest to me were beautiful ceramic guitar slides made by Karen that I use while playing my home-made 3 and 4-string canjos, one of which is the background of the pic above. I now own three of karen's slides and those babies work "real good". Hand-made to provide some beefy weight, but covered with a pretty glaze, they come in different sizes to fit the finger size and use requirements of any slide player. But, each one is a bit different which appealed to me as a crafter myself, and they will likely be around longer than I will.

If you ever get the chance to visit Dillsboro, don't miss stopping by Riverwood Pottery on the Craft Circle, a small group of artisan shops just a short walk over the bridge on Scott's Creek from downtown Dillsboro. Brant will likely be "throwing" pots on the wheel in his studio attached to their shop and, besides being a real kick to talk with, he might even give you a demonstration on the art of pottery that he knows so much about.

Kodakaster 4 - Sapele Gold

I saw this 35mm bulk film can for sale on eBay a few weeks ago and had the thought that the gold color might be a nice color contrast with Flatpup humbucker that I wanted to try with my next canjo build. So, I went online and bought the gold can (the buy now option), and the hand-wound copper wire humbucker made and sold online by Elmar Zeilhofer in Vienna, Austria.

The film can arrived here first and, since I already had stained and polished the dark red, mohogony-like sapele wood neck from C. B. Gitty, I began assembling my next Kodakaster 3-string electric slide canjo, my fourth attempt since I began building them 6 months ago.

The humbucker arrived here in Asheville from Austria a few days ago and the first thing I did was glue it into place on the top of the film can under where the strings would be strung above it. The glue took about 72 hours to cure and since we have been having thunder showers almost without stop for about three weeks, I figured I'd better give the glue a few extra days to harden because of the unusually high humidity we are experiencing in the Blue Ridge Mountains this summer.

This morning, I wired the pup to the electronics, installed the strings, plugged it in and fired up my newest Kodakaster through my little Fender Rumble 15 bass practice amp. It really sounds great with a more full-frequency spectrum from the humbucker than from the other piezo pickups that I used for two of my first three Kodakasters. It amplifies the slide chords without any hum or feedback and has a very clean, bluesy tone.

And, I think my Kodakaster 4 looks pretty cool, too.

Live and learn, eh? Onward!

Kodakaster Take 3

My third version of the Kodakaster Film Can 3-String Canjo has taken shape. This time I used an oak neck, gold machine/tuners, gold ferules, with gold bolts for the bridge and nut. I've also installed another piezo electric pickup attached inside the can with a guitar cord jack and volume control. I keep thinking that I will become faster at making these but I learn something building each new version and try to make each new model better than the last. So, as my Dad used to say, slow and steady wins the race.

The next Kodakaster I will build (#4) will feature a sapele neck (a beautiful dark-red African hardwood similar to mahogany), gold fixtures and two new elements. Instead of the shiny silver metal 35mm film cans that I recycled from my collection for the first three Kodakasters, I will be using a gold colored, matte finished film can that I purchased on eBay for $1.90 (shipping was $8). In addition, another new variation will be the addition of a guitar-style pickup, called a Flatpup, that I found online that I think will be a perfect addition to the next variant of the Kodakaster.

Hand crafted by Elmar Zeilhofer of Vienna, Austria, these beautiful humbucker pickups are only 4mm thick so, unlike conventional humbuckers which are much thicker and would necessitate being installed through a hole cut into the top of my canjo, Flatpups can be glued to the top of my film can on the outside with the small wires entering the body of the canjo through a small hole underneath it.

As I have found out, there is a perceptive difference in the sound gathering properties between piezo and magnetic guitar pickups. Piezo pickups can sound more harsh in the mid and higher frequencies while magnetic pickups like the Flatpup Humbuckers made by Elmar Zeilhofer generally produce a more aggressive, pleasant, full spectrum sound than a piezo pickup without equalization.

So, now the waiting begins until a small package arrives from Europe with my shiny new humbucker. I can't wait to glue it onto Kodakaster #4, plug it into the closest amplifier and crank 'er up!

The Dymaxion Film Can Combo Amp/Speaker

“Do More with Less” was an admonition from the late, great educator, philosopher, architect, and design scientist/futurist R. Buckminster Fuller who, among his various inventions in the last century, included practical applications of the geodesic dome.

The word Dymaxion, a brand name that Fuller used for several of his inventions, is a portmanteau (a combination of two or more words and their definitions, into one new word) from the words dynamic, maximum, and tension.

This brand name was needed for Fuller's first architectural model of a synergistically designed single family dwelling, later known as the Dymaxion house. He also used the word for many of his other futuristic inventions including the Dymaxion house, the Dymaxion car, and the Dymaxion World Map.

As a very-much lesser inventor myself, and having a need for a inexpensive, simple,  portable, battery-powered combo speaker/amplifier to use with my other “invention”, the 3-string film electric canjo I call the Kodakaster, I decided to try to use another larger film can similar to one I used for the canjo (this one 14 inched in diameter) in the spirit of  the modern mantra, “recycle - reuse”.

My thinking was that I might find some way to turn the empty metal film can to my purposes by applying a so-called tactile transducer inside the can. I had to look no further for such a devise than the wonderful online store, Parts Express. The Dayton Audio QEX19 Quadpod Self-Amplified Sound Exciter fit my purposes perfectly since it is small and relatively inexpensive at $18.90. As the Parts Express site proudly declares, “the QEX19 Self-Amplified Sound Exciter turns virtually any solid object into a speaker by vibrating it at speeds of up to 20,000 cycles per second. Built-in amplifier allows you to put sound virtually anywhere!”

After consulting with a knowledgeable tech expert at Parts Express via email, I also purchased a Behringer PB100 Preamp / Volume Booster Stomp Box ($24.99) to boost the piezo pickup output from my Kodacaster canjo to match regular amplifier input of the Dayton Audio exciter.

My order from Parts Express arrived a few days later in the mail and I assembled my new canjo amp, which only took about 20 minutes since each electronic component was a self-contained module and the film can only needed a small hole to run the exciter’s wire through from the inside.

I inserted batteries into the two components, fired up my newest musical tool and, golly-bob-howdy, the sucker worked. 

Next, I built a short triangular stand from some spare wood sticks and hardware on-hand, plugged the canjo, going through the pre-amp, into the film can combo speaker and began evaluating the intensely funky sound of sliding open chords up and down the strings of my canjo’s neck.

But, I also noticed that the can produced a more pleasing tone if the bottom of it, where I had attached the exciter in the center of the inside, was facing forward toward where an audience would be. The only problem was that the bottom was completely clean without the old film laboratory label that was affixed to the top.

Then, it hit me. 

I had a decal/sticker that I'd gotten at a R. Buckminster Fuller exhibition at the Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center in Asheville last year. It fit the bottom of the can, now facing forward, as if made for that purpose, and that’s when I thought of calling it the Dymaxion Film Can Combo Amp/Speaker.

Since I’m not planning to reproduce and market my canjo speaker, I don’t think The Fuller Foundation will bother to come after me for using the brand name, Dymaxion.

And, somehow I don’t think Bucky would mind either.

The John Fred Prazen Canjo

The John Fred Prazen, My First Kodakaster Electrified

The addition of a piezo pickup complete with volume control and 1/4 inch guitar cable jack to my John Fred Prazen film canjo seems to be a success so far. It works!!! I plugged it into my DigiTech RP 1000 Guitar Multi-Effects Pedal and and my little Fender Rumble 15 practice amp and, oh my, what a unique sound came from just a few sliding chords with my brass slider.

I put it back together, attached an old camera case strap with nylon chord and, presto! I got me a funky, rustic, three-string, electrified chord banger.