Clever project, IP. Let us
know how it goes at the local shopping center
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.
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.
Clever project, IP. Let us
know how it goes at the local shopping center
To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson
Playboy, if you make one and
sounds decent and want to sell, send me a music sample via email, I will buy one off you, Im starting to collect
original weird string instruments, most are eastern, and some north african. already have a few baltic type
strings.
if you are into these tunes, try listening to a band called the tea party. they are canadian, and in
thier music incorporate alot of different traditional sounds, they are a very successful rock group, here in Oz, so
although these alternative type instruments are deemed for alternative type music by the masses, not so, if they are
played right for rock music
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