So I leave for Italy via London to play two festivals-one in Rome,one in Parma.As the plane descends into Rome, the Mediterranean sea is immediately below me to one side, to the other, the Italian landscape looks beige and parched of the rain which gives the English landscape its deep green hue.Its 33 and its gonna be a hot few…

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 I write to advise members of the CBG community about an unfortunate experience I recently had with Ted Crocker. Before I do so, I would like to mention that I have been a very good customer and more than a little supportive to Ted. I helped him unload when he first moved to Tallahassee. I paid him $100.00 more than his asking price for a CBG, to help him get situated. I carried him and his guitars to a local blues event. When he began to experience his present financial woes, I bought THREE…

Well..it's been a busy couple of weeks for me..making 8 guitars in a week, up to Stockport for the Air Raid Shelter session...finishing off another 4 customer guitars, then this Saturday off to Ashbourne for an all-day gig with ChickenboneBues...and Sunday the Pendle Guitar Festival...a lot of miles and a lot of hours.  And after all this I'm still behind with my work...with orders for guitars and parts coming in...still, I'm not complaining.

Photo from the Lancashire…

http://glennkaiser.com/heavy-errr-not-heavy-but-all-metal

This time I figured I'd just stick it on my own site and mention it here in cigarboxnation.com

Sometimes You Eat The Bear

By John Bolton

Bill True was in a deep sleep when his alarm clock woke him. It was the first Saturday of January, 1932. Bill had slept poorly until that last hour before the alarm went off at six. Saturday was his least favorite day. It was bill collection day. Bill was a milkman.

The job wasn’t making ends meet. His wife, Emma, was laid off from the dry cleaners. Emma was in Clinton, Iowa to help with the birth of their first grandchild. She’d…

My daughter's first grade teacher invited me in this afternoon to play the guitars I've made and a couple that my daughter has helped put together.

I suggested that I have a couple acoustics, but the kids might like it better if I brought an amplifier with me.  Heh, heh. The teacher agreed. . .

Let's see how it goes.  Cold Cereal Blues is getting…

Today's Giveaway of the Day might be of interest to some folks.

I'm working on this booklet of theory cheat sheets as a reference to help me with Keni Lee's lessons, as well as generally learning songs and writing new songs. Being an open source and creative commons kinda guy, I figures that it may be helpful for others, so I'll put it up here for free download. If you catch any mistakes, please let me know!

By the way, I've got it printed up half size so I can make a booklet out of it.

Enjoy!…

I finished stripping down the Satellite bass and my boxes arrived. With the guitar in bits I played around holding the neck to the boxes trying to decide the best approach.

Before I saw the boxes I imagined I'd use whichever was the biggest, but once I saw them I changed my mind and decided to use the smallest.

I've a friend David who had…

* Guitar: 3 strings DAd

* Harp: 4 bass strings

* 9 sympathetic resonance strings

3 Flatpup pickups for the guitat strings, the bass harp strings and the sympathetic strings

Yeah I tried to shortcut my way into CBGs. But the world had other ideas and I missed out on both the CBGs on ebay I considered getting. I used to have an old kids bass guitar I got given maybe 20 years ago and the last time I saw it was on the basement wall. Hmmm. There's a bookcase there now.

I removed top few shelves of books and tilted the bookshelf and sure enough the guitar was still there on the wall. A bit of gymnastics stood on a stool, tilting a bookshelf and I managed to…

I was working on my 2nd CBG when I noticed that the box I am using is not wood but pressed paper about 7/16 thick. Has anyone used something like this? Will it effect the sound??

Building a Washtub Bass

I built this bass and wrote this whole thing up back in February, but then never posted it.  I originally posted it at http://howandsometimeswhy.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/building-a-washtub-bass/  Pretty much everything transferred to this blog except a slide a show with a few…

been gone from the site for awhile, busy making guitars after u-all gave me the bug, thanks for all the advice, posted some pictures on my page, looking for feedback

Doyle Guitars will be on display at Iron Stone Winery which is in the gold country of Northern California, just a few hours east of the Bay Area.

The guitars will be on exhibit at the Iron Stone Museum, as noted in their blog, starting today & through…

What I love about this site is all the inventiveness and imagination that people come up with when they are building these things. It gives me lots of fresh ideas.

Had a brilliant gig last night at Burgoyne Heights - the place was packed with over 125 people! I'll pop up a video in the next week or so!

Ive added a video of Saturdays gig at The Priory - hope you enjoy! Now looking forward to Thursdays gig at The Grand Woolwich Theatre.

All the best,

Leadhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmLFpasicbI

I had a great gig last night at the Priory with people up dancing and stompin their way through the 2 x 45 min sets. I could feel the floor vibrating when the audience stomped - at one point it nearly toppled the pa speaker and stand over! Introduced a whole lot of new people to the Cigar Box genre and as usual Kevin Dore was awesome on bass.

Looking forward to the next gig - tonight at Burgoyne Heights for the Jubilee.