The How-To Repository for the Cigar Box Guitar Movement!
How to Build and Play Cigar Box Guitars and other Homemade Instruments
We’ve just added a new category to the Cigar Box Guitar History section of the knowledgebase here on CigarBoxGuitar.com – historic photos! In this section we will archive a range of historic photos and illustrations showing not only cigar box guitars but also other homemade/handmade instruments.
If you have or know of any such photos, be sure to send them to us or send us a link of where we can find them!
A few days ago we shared an awesome video of UK-based Ben “Uke” Rouse playing Led Zeppelin’s classic song “Kashmir” on a 3-string cigar box guitar. Well after a huge hue and outcry, Ben has worked out tablature for his arrangement, so that now you can try your hand at it too!
Ben has been a professional ukulele player and mandolinist in the UK for years, and only recently (VERY recently – he first picked up a CBG only a couple of days before creating the Kashmir video). You can find out more about Ben here on his FaceBook page.
We’re very happy to feature this here on CigarBoxGuitar.com, and hope to be presenting more of Ben’s tab arrangements soon.
Cigar Box Nation member Michael Van Slyke of Texas recently uploaded this photo of a custom 6-string cigar box guitar he built. Check out that custom-shaped aluminum bar stock outer frame! This is the sort of creative and innovative work is inspiring for builders everywhere.
Click the image to the right to see the full-size photo, or click here to check out Michael’s page on Cigar Box Nation where some of his other creations can be seen. Michael is one of thousands of amazing, innovative folks on Cigar Box Nation creating cigar box guitars and other wacky homemade instruments. If you’re ever short on inspiration for your next build, spend a few minutes browsing through the photos over there and you’ll soon have no shortage of ideas!
These days it isn’t hard to find information about cigar box guitars and cigar box guitar building on the internet. Between sites like this one, CBGitty.com, Facebook, YouTube, and a host of other 3rd-party sites, the Internet seems increasingly full of a plethora of information.
It’s easy to forget that there was a time, not all that long ago, when finding information about cigar box guitars was a lot harder. One site that permanently changed that for the better, is www.CigarBoxNation.com, which for the past 6 years has been the central meeting point, community and repository of the cigar box guitar movement.
Cigar Box Nation was founded by Shane Speal in late 2008, and since then it has grown to over 13,000 members from all around the world, who have uploaded hundreds of thousands of photos, videos, forum posts and more.
While CBG enthusiasts have found a number of other venues to show off their creations, “The Nation” as it is called by fans is still the best place to create a permanent record of your creations and get them seen by other builders, and see what others have done. It is also the best place (after this site) to research building and playing info, and ask questions.
So if you haven’t checked out Cigar Box Nation yet, you owe it to yourself to have a look. There is a LOT to take in there, so don’t get overwhelmed your first time. Sign up & join, check out some photos and vids, read some forums and posts, and maybe upload a photo or vid yourself. Get involved, and have fun!
…tell them to shut up and watch this video. Ben Uke Rouse does an amazing rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” on a 3-string CBG.
Temporary stick-on contact pickups are a great way to quickly and easily add a pickup to an acoustic instrument like cigar box guitars. Using it is simple – just peel off the adhesive backing on the pickup disk, place it on the sound board of your instrument, plug in an amp cord to the other end and start rocking out. Continue reading “Product Feature: The Red Dot Stick-on Pickup”
Shane Speal, the man who started the modern Cigar Box Guitar movement, talks about how he rediscovered the cigar box guitar, and why he continues to play them 22 years later.
After a brief hiatus to attend the NAMM show out in California last week, we’re back at it creating great new content and adding it to the knowledgebase here on CigarBoxGuitar.com. Here is a round-up of the latest additions:
We’ve been wanting to add some ukulele-specific content to our knowledgebase for a while, but we didn’t have a uke expert in-house so it wasn’t going very well. Enter One-Hand Dan Russell, a performing musician with an awesome unique style and immense musical ability.
We first met Dan down in Huntsville, AL at the Lowe Mill Cigar Box Guitar Festival last May, and ran into him again at the Chicago CBG fest this past November. Dan plays a mean cigar box uke, so it’s a natural fit to feature some of his how-to-play content in our knowledgebase here on CigarBoxGuitar.com!
This first video lesson has Dan walking you through how he plays the song “Hold On” by the Alabama Shakes. We’ll be adding more great videos from Dan as he creates them, so stay tune. Viva la Ukulele!
Have you heard of CigarBoxNation.com?
“King of the Cigar Box Guitar” Shane Speal founded it back in 2008 to be the home of the Cigar Box Guitar revolution, and since then it has grown to over 13,000 members worldwide, with tens of thousands of photos, videos, dozens of topical groups and hundreds of thousands of forum and blog posts.
It is a great place to get to know other builders, share photos and videos of your creations, ask questions and learn about this wonderful, crazy hobby. Stuff posted on Cigar Box Nation is a lot more “permanent” and easy-to-find than posting things on Facebook groups, too – your stuff can always be easily found on your profile page.
So if you are just getting into cigar box guitars, or are a long-time enthusiast, you should discover (or re-discover) Cigar Box Nation! Long live the Cigar Box Guitar revolution!
Folks have been asking us to show the how-to steps behind installing electric guitar pickups in cigar box guitars for a long time, especially our P90 Soapbar clones. Well, you asked for it and Glenn Watt has delivered it: a well-produced 10-minute vid walking you through every step of installing one of these babies on a neck-through cigar box guitar.
Click the image to the left or this link to got to the video’s entry in our knowledgebase encyclopedia.
Glenn is quickly becoming a leader in the field of creating informative, easy-to-understand and well-produced cigar box guitar how-to videos, and we are proud to be able to feature his work here on CigarBoxGuitar.com. We hope you are able to make great use of this info in building your own cigar box guitars!
Three new tab sheets have been added to the knowledgebase library in the last couple of days, ranging from classic Americana to feel-good classic rock to a popular modern song. All are tabbed for 3-string cigar box guitars tuned to Open G “GDG”. Use the links below to view the posts about each:
Camptown Races by Stephen Foster