Irish Bouzouki

CBOM

A little glimpse at my newest Irish Bouzouki! Built to a similar size of the classic bouzouki luthiers like Foley and Abnett. This lovely piece of Acer Campestre from Conway tonewoods  just seemed to me that it wanted to be a bouzouki.

Bouzouki

With a surprisingly sweet taptone and outrageous figuring for a native species hardwood. The fast attack you get from Acer family really lends itself to the hard rhythm Irish bouzouki style.

Irish bouzouki rosette

With a nod to the man himself, Stefan Sobell, I have enjoyed this slightly more challenging rosette. All handcut and so there are no off the peg jigs to let you makes rosettes like this easily. But for me that makes it all the more satisfying.

More CBOM family instruments coming this way soon!

Irish BouzoukiIrish Bouzouki

Lacewood Cittern

CBOM
Lacewood cittern, with ebony and sterling silver rosette.

Not quite the bank holiday weekend off, but it has meant I’ve had time to catch up on the website. I had a lot of fun building this lacewood 10 string Cittern, set up in open G. It’s not a wood that I’ve used frequently for Citterns, but I’m really pleased with the results. In sound, it has something akin to mahogany, as well as a little maple there as well. Either way, it has a really eye catching figuring.

This build had a bit of a silver theme: with an ebony and sterling silver rosette, with a handmade nickel-plated tail piece (it’s a pet peeve of mine when tailpieces don’t match other hardware).

To help deal with the tension of 10 strings, the Cittern has carbon fibre neck reinforcements  and double-walled sides to give it a little extra punch.