InternationalPlayboy
08-25-2006, 08:21 PM
Reading a
recent issue of Playboy, I noticed a blurb about a Canadian company that made cigar box guitars. These are custom
made and sell for around $200 a piece. I had never heard of anything like that before, but wanted one. A web search
found similar instruments going for around $60 on eBay and also several sites on making your own. From what I
gather, many of the old blues greats started on homade instruments like these.
Not really able to justify
spending $200 on something like that on this time and not sure of the eBay ones, I made my own three string slide
CBG over two weekends, complete with CBG amplifier (see attachment). The amp is a 7 watt kit I found online. It does
suffer from some hum problems, so I've got to work on shielding and/or grounding problems.
Even with the
flaws that comes from a first attempt, I'm pretty happy with my gitbox. Sounds pretty good, better than I Imagined.
The neck is poplar, with tuning gears from an old broken Les Paul copy from Sears that I played in my late teens to
early 20s. The frets are drawn on with a Sharpie permanent market and the scale came from where I took most of my
instruction, cigarboxguitars.com. The pickup is a Radio Shack transducer and the bridge, nut and string ferrules
came from a music supply company. The sound hole fillers are soffits from a mini loveur company.
Despite
having both regular and Hawaiian guitar lessons as a teen, I haven't picked up a guitar for about twenty years now.
So I'm having fun making noise and once I learn to play this thing, I will be down at tlhe local shopping centers,
playing until people give me money to stop. :D
I did probably spend over $60 making both the guitar and amp,
including buying tools I didn't have, but it was fun to make and I'm looking forward to my next one, which I think
may be a resonator model.
recent issue of Playboy, I noticed a blurb about a Canadian company that made cigar box guitars. These are custom
made and sell for around $200 a piece. I had never heard of anything like that before, but wanted one. A web search
found similar instruments going for around $60 on eBay and also several sites on making your own. From what I
gather, many of the old blues greats started on homade instruments like these.
Not really able to justify
spending $200 on something like that on this time and not sure of the eBay ones, I made my own three string slide
CBG over two weekends, complete with CBG amplifier (see attachment). The amp is a 7 watt kit I found online. It does
suffer from some hum problems, so I've got to work on shielding and/or grounding problems.
Even with the
flaws that comes from a first attempt, I'm pretty happy with my gitbox. Sounds pretty good, better than I Imagined.
The neck is poplar, with tuning gears from an old broken Les Paul copy from Sears that I played in my late teens to
early 20s. The frets are drawn on with a Sharpie permanent market and the scale came from where I took most of my
instruction, cigarboxguitars.com. The pickup is a Radio Shack transducer and the bridge, nut and string ferrules
came from a music supply company. The sound hole fillers are soffits from a mini loveur company.
Despite
having both regular and Hawaiian guitar lessons as a teen, I haven't picked up a guitar for about twenty years now.
So I'm having fun making noise and once I learn to play this thing, I will be down at tlhe local shopping centers,
playing until people give me money to stop. :D
I did probably spend over $60 making both the guitar and amp,
including buying tools I didn't have, but it was fun to make and I'm looking forward to my next one, which I think
may be a resonator model.