This past weekend, I made a trek to York, PA and attended the 10^th Annual Pennsylvania Cigar Box Guitar Festival. It was a heck of a good time and I drew a ton of inspiration from the folks in attendance. In fact, as soon as I got home, I started my first electric washboard build. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the festival, it is said to be one of the premier cigar box guitar events in the United States. It takes place every year in the parking lot of…

Every year around December my family asks me to provide gift ideas. I always do, but typically they ignore most of them and I end up getting socks or dress shirts or something like that. I don't want to sound ungrateful, I always appreciate it, but this year my older sister surprised me with a Tin Pan Alley kit from CB…

The cajon is a Peruvian percussion instrument, and a favorite among hipsters and poor college students at the moment.  Simply put, it's a box that you sit on and with your hands.  If you look up some videos of folks playing the them, you'll quickly see that they can produce a variety of sounds, especially considering the fact that it's just one box.  A blue grass group played at my church a few months ago and they used one.  I looked at it and thought, "I could build one of…

How to make an easy string Ukulele Bridge.

I recently finished a 3 stringer with 2 pickups controlled by 2 volume pots,instead of a 3 way switch.Thanks to David L.for telling me about this idea (Stracciatella Mod). I used the coils from 2 Gitty Gold Foil pickups.Diodes are soldered between each pot and the jack. Instead of soldering my grounds to the back of the pots, I flattened a piece "tin" from a can and mounted the pots thru the metal and tied all the grounds together with a bolt. It made a nice clean connection.

Just…

This Old Guitar  By Uncle John

I put my old Silvertone guitar up for sale and advertised it at a hundred dollars in the local Penny Saver. A young guy called about it then came to the house. He could play some. Not stuff I'd ever heard, but not bad stuff. He asked me, “Is there any wiggle room on the hundred?…