Pet Bowl or Resonator cone for bass

Question:

Hello Charles, I'm planning on converting an Applause acoustic bass guitar to a resonator instrument to get more volume out of it. Possible cones are your 7" Thunder cone, a 7" (m.o.l.) stainless steel dog dish, or a 9" (m.o.l.) dog dish. I was wondering which you'd recommend. Would your Thunder cone stand up to the downward pressure of bass guitar strings?

Thanks for your advice on this.

Greg

Answer:

My 7” copper cone might have the strength to support it.

I have a large dog bowl bass that I made and ultimately had to place a large dowel under the bowl to use as a support because the bowl would flex and I couldn’t keep it tuned. The dowel fixed the structural issue but took away the resonating cone sound. It did increase the volume slightly from a sound post perspective by driving the sound into the body of the instrument.

Personally I would try the copper cone before I tried a pet bowl again.

Thanks,

Charles Atchison Folk Artisan/Salvage Luthier