Box Call Size?

[hunter177]

I have two box calls and they're about the same size and sound similar. How does changing the length and/or width of a box call affect the sound? One of mine is the MAD Cherry Bomb but Primos's Battleship and Quaker Boy's Curve are almost twice as long. Could the size also affect the volume? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[howler243]

The size has alot to do with the sound. I have a QB lil boat paddle, very similar to your MAD cherry bomb, and it is a very high pitched. I also have a QB 10 sider and you can move the top paddle around to 10 positions to make it longer shorter and side to side. Each move you make with the call has a different pitch. How your paddle makes contact with that surface makes a differance in pitch as well. Your battleship is a longer call so it will cut the wind better (so I hear). Alot has to do with the make up of the call. One piece or multiple glued or has those plastic inserts holding it together. The type of wood its made from the different grains will affect volume. Also the thickness of the paddle, thinner ones will be higher then the thicker ones. For me it has seemed that the little boxes have a much higher pitch and the bigger the frame the lower the pitch is. As far as leigth goes I dont have any real long ones so i cant accuratly speek to that. Hope this helps.

[WillowRidgeCalls]

Yes it does.
The easyest way to explain this is to compare them to a garden hose. If you turned the water on full blast and took the nozzle off the end you'll get a lot of water gushing out but it doesn't spray out very far. If you put the nozzle on and turned it down to a fine stream, your putting just as much water out as you were before but it's sparying out 3 times as far. If you had a matched set of calls made of the same woods, the long box would carry the sound out twice as far as the short box would. As you play the calls there might not be much sound difference between the two, but as you run them it compresses the sound into the sound chamber. With the long box having more space it will hold a lot more sound and will carry a lot farther than the short box will. The short box may sound louder as your playing it but it only has half the sound trapped in it then the long box does.

[hunter177]

Great info, thank you guys. That's exactly what I wanted to know.

[ghamlin10]

smaller is higher pitched, it is more convienent to carry but the longer ones seem to sound better to me, of course i use slate calls more often than the box calls..... sounds like my shorter box screams, wasted money

[Cut N Run]

Longer boxes work better on windy days too. I have a QB mini boat paddle and a full size QB boat paddle and they sound similar, but that bigger box cranks out the decibels when you need it to. Both sound pretty good at lower volumes as well.

Jim