no plastic on the Red Menace. i used electric guitar strings (steel).

Is there full contact between the lid and the neck?

no. there’s really no direct contact at all between the lid and neck. the lid is attached to the sides of the box and the neck is attached to the front and back sides.

i currently have a little triangular bridge on there – it’s much shorter than the one in the picture, and does make full contact with the lid. it helps a bit.

What type of wood is the lid anyway?

1/16″ birch plywood (model airplane grade)

try building a thin wooden box around your frame for better acoustic, your current frame is too rigid for any sweet frequencies to catch on.

that’s what i was thinking – don’t see many acoustic guitars with 1/4″ sides. i’ve got enough of that plywood left that i could use that for the sides of a box.

i’d like to try an oak neck, too. the poplar seems a bit too flexible (bows a little when i tune the strings high).

If you go for strats, try using copper. Also your bridge is not making perfect contact with the body. you should file an angle to the bottom side for it to contact 100% with your resonance box.

Is there full contact between the lid and the neck?

What type of wood is the lid anyway? try building a thin wooden box around your frame for better acoustic, your current frame is too rigid for any sweet frequencies to catch on.

yep.

the bottom of the box (.25″ thick also) fits snug inside the sides, and is glued in place. so it does a lot to keep the box in shape. the top is just resting there (and is too thin to do anything anyway). but there’s really no stress on the box itself, so i didn’t bother trying to make it very strong.

also… there are some little pieces of wood in the corners (which i didn’t show here) which are ostensibly there to support the top, but are also acting as braces.

it has very little acoustic volume (expected, since it’s so small), and very little sustain (not sure why). i’m going to experiment with different bridge and nut shapes and materials to see if i can increase the sustain. perhaps the bridge is too soft? would a hardwood neck be better?

the action is definitely too high right now. but shorter bridge and nut should help there.

the contact mic is reallllly hot though. and plugged-in, the thing is plenty loud (and feeds back effortlessly).

but, it was my first try. so i wasn’t expecting perfection.

i’ll post some audio, later.