How to Build and Play Cigar Box Guitars and other Homemade Instruments
C. B. Gitty has been busy designing and creating a new series of laser-cut tools and templates to make it easier to build cigar box guitars! From sound hole templates to fretting scale templates, and even a cool neck-notching template, these tools can help take your CBG building to the next level.
We just got done adding four new cigar box ukulele how-to video lessons to the knowledgebase. All four were created by One-hand Dan Russell, our resident ukulele expert.
Here are the links:
Stack-o-Lee – a classic old bluesy song, also known as “Stagger Lee”, which has been sung by a wide range of musicians from Mississippi John Hurt, to Dr. John and many more.
If I Needed You – a beautiful folk/country song written by Townes Van Zandt, that Emmy Lou Harris did an amazing version of.
I Still Miss Someone – One of Johnny Cash’s better-known compositions, this great old song tells a tale of longing… “Oh I never got over those blue eyes…” Emmy Lou Harris, Stevie Nicks and many other musicians have also done versions of this song.
Take a Whiff On Me (Cocaine Habit Blues) – though its subject matter may now be considered taboo in polite company, this is a classic American blues/folk song first documented and published by Alan Lomax in the 1930’s. It has been covered by a wide range of performers from Woodie Guthrie to Jerry Garcia to the Old Crow Medicine Show.
That’s it, so grab your ukes and get to pickin’!
We have a feed of Glenn Watt’s blog here on the front page of CigarBoxGuitar.com, but his most recent post deserves some special attention.
In it, Glenn uses the words from Kenny’s famous song “The Gambler” as a motivational road map to building cigar box guitars (and doing pretty much any other DIY project as well).
Whether you’ve built one CBG or several hundred, give this a read. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did.
A new free fretting calculator has just been added to the knowledgebase here at CigarBoxGuitar.com. Simply enter in the scale length you want (in either inches or millimeters) and it will show you the distance from the nut to place each fret from the first fret to #36 (you don’t have to use all of them).
The calculator even shows you which frets to skip to end up with a diatonic (dulcimer-style) fretboard!
Click the image to the left or click here to check out the calculator tool.
C. B. Gitty invited its customers to show off their wildest, most inventive and artistic diddley bows. Twenty two builders submitted their photos. Here’s a full gallery.
The top three builders will receive C. B. Gitty t-shirts. The winners will be announced in the Gitty email newsletter.
During the dark days in the trenches of World War I, soldiers created all sorts of amazing pieces of “trench art” to help pass the time. Shell casings, empty cartridges, gas cans and all other sorts of military garbage were crafted into sometimes amazing works of art, from ash trays to lamp stands, drinking glasses, vases and more. Some photo evidence suggests that the humble cigar box guitar also made appearances in the trenches of Europe. (For more info on the subject of trench art in general, check out the Wikipedia page here).
This story recently appeared on the BBC web page about one particular piece of trench art, a cello crafted from a metal gas can. As the story goes, it was built by a British soldier during World War I and was never played… until now. Check out the full article (click this link or the photo to the left) for more of this great homemade/handmade musical instrument’s story.
Here is the latest cool old U. S. Patent we found to share with you – #223318 from way back in 1880!
This one shows a double-necked Appalachian-style dulcimer, with a rectangular sound box, which was granted a patent in 1880.
Believe it or not, this style of dulcimer actually played a roll in rural courtship rituals… do you know how? Check out the knowledgebase post to find out!
Want to try your hand at building your own dulcimer out of cigar boxes? Check out this post where dulcimer-whiz Diane shows you how!
The latest video how-to lesson from One-hand Dan walks you through playing the classic blues song “Cocaine Blues”, in the style of Townes Van Zandt. This is the fourth in the series of ukulele how-to play vids Dan has done, and we’re glad to be able to host them here on CigarBoxGuitar.com!
In other cigar box ukulele news, we have been busy adding some new cigar box (and other custom) ukulele models to the lineup of finished instruments over at the C. B. Gitty store. Click here to check them out!
We have just posted the first in what will be a lengthy series of historical U. S. musical instrument patents. In this series we will feature historically significant inventions (the innaugral post is what we believe to be the first adjustable guitar truss rod, awarded to Gibson in 1923), as well as other interesting, inspirational or oddball musical inventions from the last 150 or so years.
Our hope is that cigar box guitar builders and other homemade & handmade instrument crafters will find these patents useful and even inspirational. We often find that looking at what has been done in the past can be a great starting point for coming up with new innovations.
We hope you enjoy this new feature of the CigarBoxGuitar.com knowledgebase!
In this new video lesson from One-hand Dan Russell, he shows you how to play the popular modern song “Ho Hey” by The Lumineers. Only four basic chords (C, F, Am and G) are needed, so this is a great one to try if you are just getting started on the ukulele.
Click here or on the photo to the left to go to the knowledgebase entry for this great lesson!
One-string cigar box violins/fiddles played a big role in early vaudeville performances, and if you’ve ever thought about building one, here’s your chance! We just added a new entry to the “Historic Plans” section of the knoweldgebase – a great old magazine article from 1948 showing you how to build a simple one-string cigar box violin.
We even included a link to a video post over on Cigar Box Nation where you can see W. C. Fields making quite a todo over playing one of these instruments.
Shane Speal may be King of the Cigar Box Guitar, but he doesn’t just stop there – he has built and collected an amazing variety of crazy homemade instruments. In the article linked below, he walks you through how he built a dobro (resonator guitar) using a cheap metal mailbox. I’ve seen him play this monster on stage and it really has a great sound, so if you have been looking for something cool and different to build, click the image below and check it out!
