This is the place to post stories of Old Cigar Box Instruments and photos, If you want to see stuff that is newly uncovered about cigar box guitars when ever new history is found visit the website
Got any stories or Old Photos??? this is the place to post them...Let's keep history alive! if you have a story or photo please post it for all to see ..in some little way you help keep those people alive, if you don't share what you know, it will fade into history : (
Post if you find something old, we want to see it!
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Check out this news story from 1911...more cool stuff is posted at
http://homemade-guitars.com/
New cigar box guitar history posted every day, lots of interesting videos and stories, come check it out http://homemade-guitars.com/
new find today on ebay, It seems I am finding this stuff more and more!!!
...nice piece of history, more info will be posted at http://homemade-guitars.com/
1948 Cigar Box Bass Cello made from 50 cent box... the info on the back of the photo
will post more history at http://homemade-guitars.com/
nice old photo
sorry about the watermark its how I found it!...but still cool!
I will post more history at http://homemade-guitars.com/
nice bit of history!
1930's Cigar Box Banjo from the Depression Era ...more history on cigar box guitars posted daily at http://homemade-guitars.com/
Check out this early 1900's antique Appalachian violin with Snake on back
I found this for sale today, it's great example of Americana
I will post the full archive at http://www.homemade-guitars.com check out the website for lots of cool stories and history
from http://www.homemade-guitars.com
Ukulele were hard to come by when Clement Villanueva was a youngster in the Philippines. “We were very poor back home,” he says. “Ten people shared one ukulele.” I assume they took turns and didn’t all try to play the thing at once. In any case, the ukulele deprivation had a big impact on Villaneueva for which he’s more than compensated. At last count he had a collection of more than 130 ukulele, including 30 of the iconic Hawaii “cigar-box” ukes, many of which he has made himself. But his passion for the little four-stringed instruments has spread, curiously, to the hand-made cases in which ukulele are carried around. “They are so pretty,” he says of the cases. “People admire them more than my ukulele.” Cigar-box ukulele were first made by Hawaii’s legendary guitar and ukulele maker Samuel Kamaka. Villaneueva, who was a metal worker at Pearl Harbor until his recent retirement, studied an original Kamaka cigar-box ukulele and began to make his own. The problem is finding original 1886 cigar boxes. “They are very rare and hard to find right now,” he said. “I get one or two a month at swap meets and at the shows.” He collects original Kamaka ukulele and yearns for one special one. “I have so many ukulele but my collection is not complete until I find a painted Kamaka,” he says. “Hand painted in the 1920s. That one is $5,000. Hard to find.” Yeah, I say, but what’s the deal with the cases. You’ve got 80 of them, why not sell a few? “I don’t sell my cases yet because they are too pretty,” he says. And means it.
Photo: rae Huo