Hi everyone

After a long time at reading and listening to Cigar Box Nation, I finally took
time to register and create a profile on the forum :-)

I live in Lyon (France) and I call myself a "Luthier Sauvage", just like the many
other people in my country building music instruments by themselves.
Nowadays many people are walking the "Do It Yourself" road. I'm not so good
at playing guitar but I'm curious and always trying to learn new things. Meanwhile
I'm a good woodworker and craftworker, so I build music instruments with boxes,
the old school :-)

In my country it is quite difficult to get wood cigar boxes. They become rare and
even if you can find some they are expensive because most people won't give them
to you for free anymore, nowadays they sell the cigar boxes even empty...
But we can find very easily cheap metal boxes of all sizes, and they are even made
with good metal. Some come from biscuits boxes, others are sugar boxes etc...
And building such kind of music instruments with everything falling in your hands
goes well with the original spirit of the original cigar box guitars, so I build guitars
with wooden or metal boxes, accoustics or electro accoustics, mainly with 2 or 3 strings and it sounds great ! :-)

I love 3 strings and it's a choice I made to specialize myself at building 3 strings
guitars. First because learning to play 3 string is very easy, for anyone from 7 to
77 years old (as goes the saying). Then because my 3 strings guitars uses diatonic
scale and it always sounds great, whatever you are playing, even if you don't know
what you are doing, it still sounds great, no wrong notes or chords, and this only
thing will let you be very creative and feel free to create melodies ; you didn't know
you had this melody inside of you and a few seconds later you are there strumbling
and mmh-mmh-mmh-ing "something", that is just _incredible_ :-)

I hope more and more people in my country will play on 3 strings guitar because it
is fun, cheap, and sounds great. I saw some other frenchies on here, so if anyone is
around my town, feel free to get in touch with me so we can share tips and tricks
and even play together. I hope we will have soon youtube videos in french for
teaching 3 strings playing guitar, and some more partitions to help youngers to learn
easily and fast how to play, all for free.

I also build electronics and many other useful things for musicians ; most of the
time these things you cannot find in store, whatever the price. So I think one day
I will build a page or something to show up and demonstrate how to use my things.
I am working "old school", a l'ancienne as we say in french. And even when building
cheap box guitars I use the old construction methods so I can create
the best music instruments. You know, I saw many things on internet and not all
cigar box guitars are good ones. I saw people selling for quite expensive price some
"guitars" that were so badly built they could not sound correctly, I remember some
were a plank with strings nailed on a cigar box, and they were calling it a guitar, with some nails on the neck that could have hurt the player,
well that's a shame, and I'm glad to see most other people take great care at building.
So you need to beware on what you are buying. Fortunately this place Cigar Box Nation
is just excellent gathering of many talented people, so you won't waste your time
on here :-)

(ps: I discovered later someone on this CBG forum has built a great electric guitar,
called "The Plank" ; and what I'm talking above has nothing related with his great
guitar. I was talking about a youtube video from "Make:" magazine ; Fortunately there are now more how-to-build videos on internet)

I love building music instruments and I put my heart and soul into everything I build.
My guitars are carefully handcrafted with love :-) Each one, and they all have a story
to tell ; just strumble on the strings and you will hear from far away coming the sounds
of something truly living, the melody of life. Love your guitar, take care of your instrument.

Little Big One