The C. B. Gitty Gold Foil acoustic pickup is one of the most versatile and easiest magnetic pickups to mod for cigar box guitars. At only $14 each, they're deliciously cheap and I always have a half dozen of them in my woodshop at any time. (It sh
Read more…Hi, just saw Shane Speal's feature article on the 1957 tube driven tremolo plans. Pretty cool! But frankly, high voltage stuff scares the bejeezus out of me... that and my brain can only handle super simple electronics circuits. Other wise it becom
Read more…MATERIALS
Build Your Own Vibrato
Make like Elvis with an "electronic" throbbing guitar
Once again, we have uncovered some great vintage plans for you. These vibrato (actually tremolo) plans were first printed in the Popular Electronics December 1957 issue. W
Read more…2015 Chicago CBG Fest
Nov. 13 & 14, 2015
Live at the Brauerhouse: 1000 N Rohlwing Rd, Lombard IL
The Chicago Cigar Box Guitar Festival has consistently been one of the best CBG Fests in America. Top-notch talent, a full cigar box guitar market on
Read more…These plans are archived as a downloadable PDF file, perfect for printing. In them, author "Bill" shows his schematic for making a primitive homemade bass guitar, as pictured below.
We challenged you to build musical instruments with a Halloween theme and you delivered! It was a very tough one to judge, especially when we're basing it on just 5 photos per guitar. (We're dying to test drive some of these freaks!)
Thanks to C. B
Read more…In our never ending search for cigar box guitar plans, we stumbled across these very simple instructions to build a one-string bass with a "whamola" style lever as the tuner. The plans come from a 1970's children's book. (I've lost the book's name o
So what do you do with those other boxes... the ones that just don't make great guitars?
Michael Ballerini (a.k.a. Cigar Box Nation member, "Delvero") built this cigar box apothecary shelf system using cigar boxes:
The toy wagon in the top pictu
Read more…The story behind the "Damned if I do..." guitar
by Shane Speal
Last week, I stepped into my woodshop with the goal of capturing struggle, poverty and The Blues within the artistic side of cigar box guitar building. I put a cd of Crying Sam Collins
Read more…Christmas Season guitar sales are around the corner and you could be getting free press to promote your cigar box guitars.
You just need to start on it now.
This made the front page of my local newspaper... >>>
"Cigar-Box Guitarist Goes with Crow
Read more…OK people here it is, the cheapest motorized fret slots cutting aid ever, but I have to give the concept credit to Izzy Swan…
As you can see I took an electric 3/8” drill, used a compressor fitting, male to female to increase the size to 1/2”.
Read more…The nail violin is a musical instrument was invented by German violinist Johann Wilde in 1740. It consists of a semicircular wooden soundboard with iron or brass nails of different lengths arranged to produce a chromatic scale when bowed with a viol
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I couldn't believe these ads when I first found them. Mussehl & Westphal first ran these ads around 1924 in Popular Mechanics Magazine. In doing more research, I learned that cigar box uke player, Shelley Rickey wrote a whole blog about them. Rea
Read more…In our quest to discover and compile all the great DIY musical instrument plans of the last 150 years, we stumbled across these great electric guitar plans from 1959.
The Strat and Les Paul were only several years old when Mechanix Illustrated maga
Read more…The plans feature a solid 5-string (!) mandolin made from a wooden cigar box. From the lost files of cigar box guitar history, we present these plans which were rediscovered by John "Reddog" McNair of Reddog Guitars. (Thanks again, Reddog!)
These
Read more…Notes from Shane Speal's personal woodshop, York PA
Instrument: "Nails & Screws" 4-String Electric Cigar Box Guitar
Completed tonight at 8pm. This will eventually be on sale at www.SpealGuitars.com. I just need to let the glue dry and spend a coup
Read more…A review by Shane Speal
Cigar Box Guitar and classical music meet again after 150 years!
Legend has it, in the middle of 19th century, there were musicians who performed classical pieces on homemade instruments such as Cigar Box Guitar. Unfortuna
Les Claypool's one-string Whamola is the mutated and high voltage bastard-son of the washtub bass. Using a lever tuning/playing system, the instrument delivers globular, freak-out sounds. Just watch this video to get an idea...
We've seen many
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