I'm total newbie when it comes to cigar box guitars... I've never built one, never played one, never even seen one up close in person. I didn't even know they existed before I stumbled across some videos on youtube. I was blown away by the sound -- I think someone was playing one through a Fender tweed and it had a wonderful raw tone. So I started looking at other videos and eventually Google led me here. After looking through the photos and videos and posts, I decided I really want to give it a try.

Some of the things that attracted me are:

• The variety of tones from haunting and soulful to straight up rockin.
• I've been playing guitar off and on for thirty-odd years (and still pretty much suck!), but I've never played any slide.This seems like a great way to get my feet wet.
• I like building things. The last few years I've been scratch building tube amps and I wanted to try building a solid body guitar. So I bought some books on the subject and quickly decided that my modest woodworking skills are probably not yet up to making a decent playable standard guitar neck from scratch (neck angle, mortised neck joint, tapered radiused finger board, truss rod, frets, fret leveling, dressing, etc. etc. Again CBG seemed that a more feasible way to get started building an instrument. From looking at the photos here I see the hobby encompasses all manner instruments from the most incredibly rough and basic (2x4 + wire + bottle) to all types of acoustic or electric guitar.
• I'm used to the commonly accepted notion that a "real" instrument can only be made by an experienced craftsman or purchased for a lot of $$$, and playing with boxes or quaker oat cans is only for kids. I was amazed to see what great music could be played with something very simple in the right hands.
• The seemingly endless variety of what and how folks build.

Oh well, enough blah blah blah. I just got a hold of a few cigar boxes and I'll start looking for the rest of the materials. I'm sure I'll have lots of newbie questions going forward.

Take care.