My first cigar box guitar
Here's my first cigar box guitar. The frets are crooked, the action is too high (because I forgot that I needed to shave off the part of the neck that's glued to the box), the sound hole cuts into the neck, the neck is split, I shouldn't have used pine for the neck because it will bow, the fret dots aren't centered. And yet it works! I have already started making CBG #2.
If you are interested in making one of your own, I recommend Bill Jehle's excellent DVD: How to Build a Guitar: the String Stick Box Method, and joining Cigar Box Nation, a social network of cigar box guitar makers.


the latest
latest episodes
It's great! When I knew you were building one, I imagined one littler than this!
Cristina
Sweet! This post needs a video of an inaugural performance!
...and yet, all those imperfections make it a perfect cigar box guitar.
Welcome to your new addiction, Mark!
-shane speal
http://www.cigarboxguitar.com
I wonder if I should start work on a cigar box guitar of my own, or if I should learn how to play guitar first.
Four strings good, six strings better.
That's nothing-- I rolled a cigar out of the cardboard box my guitar came in. . . that's right, a guitar box cigar (and it tasted every bit as nasty as a regular cigar.)
Cool--I like the button fret markers.
For your next one, you might want to keep an eye out for abandoned pallets. Many pallets (at least around here) are made of oak. I've got a big stack of oak palletwood stashed in the shed waiting for just such a project. The tough thing is deciding what to build first: cookie tin banjo, oil can guitar, cigar box guitar?
Rock on, Mark! How do you have it tuned?
Here's how mine looks now. I did my tuning pegs over again, going from machine screws in the base to real tuners on a separate pegboard.
Remember that Arduino effects pedal idea? Still haven't got it to sound good, so next I'm going to try a non-Arduino approach...