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Permalink Reply by Flatrat on June 10, 2011 at 4:46am

AFKAM,

so it would seem that you're sayin'

You can run, you can run
tell my friend Willie Brown
(th)'at I got the cigar box blues this mornin Lord
babe, I'm sinkin down

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Permalink Reply by Flatrat on June 10, 2011 at 5:33am

That's cool Ellwood. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only who enjoys making CBGs in spite of not yet knowing how to really play them. Even if I never get proficient with them I enjoy learning by doing and researching on the internet what will make them sound better. Not everything works and some get disassembled shortly after they're completed to get the parts back.

I will most likely continue with this hobby making them for friends even if all I personally can ever do is squawk away on 'em. I guess that's okay to too. There's plenty of talented guitar players in the world but not as many Luthiers. So, to twist an old joke about being alert I'd have to say: be a Luthier, the world needs more Lutes.

 

Good luck with your lessons!

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Permalink Reply by colin mcgrath on June 10, 2011 at 6:41am

I was reading the newspaper one day, and therein was an article on this cool looking guitar with a cigar box as the body. I thought several things: one being "I can make that!" then "I might be able to make extra money on this someday", then I thought "what better guitar to play than one I built with my own 2 hands". Then I found a website with this Scotty guy who had step by step instructions on making this contraption. That was 6 years ago and I love constructing these instruments. The fun part is the conversations I have at cigar bars/shops about what I am doing, and the learning I am accruing on working with wood.

 

By the way I have never watched the movie crossroads. 8v0

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Permalink Reply by Malcolm Wright on June 10, 2011 at 7:22am

I've just built my first one! It's a one-string made out of an old Oxo tin with a hard wood neck, piezo pick-up. I LOVE IT!!!!

My inspiration came from people like Chickenbone John, Roosterman, Hollowbelly and, rather obviously, Seasick Steve. I've been a blues/R&B fan for longer than I care to admit, but lived through punk and pub-rock and really got a buzz out of the DIY attitude of those guys. It was a case of two fingers to the well polished, over produced music (?!) of the mid seventies and the belief that anyone can have a go. So what if you can't play like Clapton or afford a 1960s Strat, it's what's in your heart that counts. And that's what comes across time and again on this site and on the UK based site - homegrownmusiccollective.com - everyone's in it for the laugh and the love. The fact that we can inspire, support, advise, and above all laugh with (and at!) each other is what really makes me want to do it. 

I'm just about to start build number two - a bit nicer three string this time with a really decent handmade pick-up (cheers Juju!) and I can't wait to get started. I can't play a damn note but that'll come in time. At the moment I'm just happy to be part of something really cool and to get to know some fun, equally deranged folk as myself!

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Permalink Reply by Mark Werner on June 10, 2011 at 9:01am

I like to make things... I had just done a series of longbows a few years ago and found working with the wood fun.  I was wandering through the bookstore and spotted the issue of MAKE magazine with the cigar-box guitar on the cover.   I said..."I could do that!"

And it all went downhill from there.....

 

Hehe... I sit here surrounded by instruments which have also re-kindled my interest in playing regular guitar... Just bought a new Taylor.

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Permalink Reply by Ryan Rose on June 10, 2011 at 9:31am

A few years ago, I saw a link on Fark.com, with the heading "The coolest guitar made out of a cigar box you'll see all day." I immediately flashed back to kindergarten and stretching rubber bands over milk cartons, but I clicked anyway. Shane posted that link, and it was a video of him playing a Red Dog. Blew me away. I had to have more, so I searched everywhere. Youtube gave me more Shane, and Smojo, and Hollowbelly; Google gave me the plans. When I saw those, it blew my mind again. "That doesn't look too difficult!" But it still took me a couple of years to get started, during which I found Crow's how-to videos, which fanned the flames. I read all I could find, and last November I finally picked up the parts for my first build, which I finished the day after Christmas. It was far from perfect, but it was special. And it sowed the seeds for 6 more guitars, a dulcimer, a banjo, a diddly bow, and two successful canjos (which are the only ones out of the bunch that I can play). I love building this stuff. People always tell me that I should sell them at art fairs/craft shows, etc., and I always tell them no. It's too much work. This is my hobby, and I have no intention of subjecting it to deadlines and the tyranny of demand. I'll sell, when I feel like it, and what I feel like making. You'll take what I give you, when I get around to it, or you can build your own damn guitar, which is what you should be doing anyway.

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Permalink Reply by Bad Finger (Eric) on June 10, 2011 at 9:44am

Can I get an amen!

 

Out of gratitude, I gave my first Diddley Bow to the cigar store that supplies me with great deals on all the boxes I can carry out of the fine establishment.  And I've wanted to cry ever since.  Maybe I'll have to go back and visit it.  Make sure it's OK and they are treating it right.

 

I put way to much time in to making a 3 or 4 string neck by hand to sell it and feel good about the price and there are loads of people selling great guitars to great people.  So I take your same approach.  I'll sell a Diddley bow here and there to pay for materials, but its on my terms.  No commissioned work.  :)

Ryan Rose said:

People always tell me that I should sell them at art fairs/craft shows, etc., and I always tell them no. It's too much work. This is my hobby, and I have no intention of subjecting it to deadlines and the tyranny of demand. I'll sell, when I feel like it, and what I feel like making. You'll take what I give you, when I get around to it, or you can build your own damn guitar, which is what you should be doing anyway.

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Permalink Reply by Outhouse Instruments on June 10, 2011 at 4:24pm

Ok, now in all  honesty , the truth ain't near as fun.

I play bass. I ran across these things on the good ol' www and built one.

It was crap. Built another , a bass this time. It was ok. Built a 3rd, nuther bass.

Had it figured out ( kinda) and built a couple of 3 stringers that were ok. Show them to a friend who owned a guitar shop who wanted one to sell.

 

See, fallin' down on my knees at the croosroad was a lot more fun.

 

 

AFKAM

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Permalink Reply by Chuck Dubman on June 10, 2011 at 7:23pm

Wanted a new guitar but couldn't afford one.  The same old blues story you've heard a thousand times before. Read up how Jeff Beck got started. 

 

Because that unlike a "fine" "real" guitar, there's no "right" (or "wrong") way to build a CBG, it's FAR more open to artistic expression.  For a simple box with a stick running through it, there's ALWAYS a new way to pull it off.  Finishes alone are a whole universe to explore.  Whereas a slavish copy of a vintage Martin D-28 can only be finished like a Martin D-28, on a CBG, I can apply the most garish paints, dyes, lacquers, and so on, and get away with it.

 

There's also the pure, almost primitive, magic of stringing up what used to be an empty box and a pile of wood from a dismantled piece of furniture and hearing it sing, like a newborn baby squalling for the first time. 

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Permalink Reply by Brian Hunt on June 10, 2011 at 9:22pm

I had just finished a parts stratocaster build and I was in the middle of rebuilding a 1970's era Japanese Gibson copy I had got out of a pawn shop for $35.00 and was researching telecasters when I came across a picture of a cigar box guitar on google images. It was so cool that I stopped and remembered reading about cigar box instruments when I was younger (though for the life of me I can't say where exactly I read about them) and then I remembered reading some of the stuff from the Firefox books about making instruments in the Appalachian mountains. After doing a search for how to's and plans on the internet I found the Cigar Box nation and several other ideas about making your own instruments.  After watching several cigar box videos on youtube, which has struck up a love affair with the blues for me, I just had to make my own. A friend gave me my first couple of cigar boxes and I immediately started both a 3 string and a 4 string. I have been building and selling since. Though I have kept my first instruments for myself.

 

Not much of a player, but I started building guitars so I could learn to play in the first place. With practice, I am slowly getting better as a player. I am a fairly good builder, but my playing has a lot of catching up to do. I don't expect my obsession with building guitars to stop at this point. I will continue to build CBG's, but I will also branch out into electrics, acoustics, arch-tops, etc. as my building skills continue to improve.

 

Brian.

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Scott Mitchell on June 11, 2011 at 1:08am

Saw my first CBG at a garage sale, and had I had the money on me I would have bought it,  when I got home I started to look up information on building them and thought "I can do this."  Started gathering boxes, tools, parts, etc...  I built a couple of Diddley Bows to start then moved to 3 strings.  I'm up to build #29 and see no end in making them.  Like everyone else who has built them, it almost becomes an obsession, I really had never worked with wood before this either. 

I've been playing guitar, bass and ukulele for over 30 years and if someone told me I'd be making my own guitars a year ago I would have though they were crazy.    Amazing what you can do when you put your mind to it.

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Permalink Reply by Flatrat on June 11, 2011 at 1:09am

These are all great stories and I agree with comments that mention the artistic freedom allowable when building one and also share the thrill at the end when I'm almost finished and can hardly wait until I get to string it, tune it and strum across the strings for the first time. I have the Foxfire books in my library and remembered the section on homemade banjos and dulcimers and reread those stories after I had built a 3 string and one string canjo.

I first got interested when I found the son of a friend of my Father's lived about 20 minutes up the road from me in the east Tennessee mountains and for a side business he was building CBGs. Travis' company is called Slackjack Guitars. I listened to his Youtubes from his website, considered buying one of his kits but found detailed instructions and plans to build strumstick/stick dulcimer and decided to give it a try. Just built another one of those for my friend's daughter's 5th birthday. Her parents are musicians and she is showing great interest but her hands are small so this was lightweight and she can get her hands around the fingerboard. She can learn a few things on it now and maybe later in life use it for a backpack instrument. I really love giving them as gifts, people go nuts about them.

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